Recovery
by jayjaybee
Summary: Patsy's taller than she expected, prettier too, more elegant. Mrs Busby meets Patsy in the hospital after Delia's accident.
1. Chapter 1

**a/n: One last amnesia fic before the Christmas special. This'll be in three parts, I think.**

Patsy's taller than she expected, prettier too, more elegant. For a moment Mrs Busby thinks that the thing she fears most about her daughter can't be true after all, because Patsy looks so normal, and surely, someone who looks so normal wouldn't be that way and if she's not that way, this woman whose presence in Delia's letters has been a source of anxiety to her for so long, if she's not that way, then her daughter might not be either.

But then 'I'm Patsy', Patsy says, as if she somehow expects Mrs Busby to know who she is, what that means, and that brief hope is crushed, because of course Mrs Busby knows who she is and what that means. It means everything she fears about her daughter and this woman is true.

Mrs Busby takes a moment. 'Oh, of course,' she says. 'You're the lady she helps at cubs,' she says.

'You're the lady she helps at cubs,' she says, because she can't say what she wants to say. She can't say, 'Oh, so you're Patsy, the one my daughter's infatuated with. You're the reason my daughter hardly ever comes home to Wales, where she'd be safe. You're the reason she stays here in this city so far from her family and where there are dangers round every corner. You're the reason why she's lying in that bed, why she's fitting, why she doesn't know who her own mother is.'

'You're the lady she helps at cubs,' she says, putting Patsy in her place. 'You're the lady she helps at cubs,' she says, in the hope that if she says it, if she believes it, it will become true. That this woman will be just someone her daughter helped, now and again, with a group of small boys.

Saying it doesn't make it true. What it does do, though, is hurt this woman. She can see it her eyes.

It doesn't make Mrs Busby feel any better either. And despite herself, within moments she finds she's spilling out details of Delia's condition: about the seizures, about the memory loss, about her battered and bruised body.

As they stand there in the corridor and she sees her own devastation reflected back to her by Patsy, a nurse comes out of the ward. Eager, anxious, Mrs Busby catches her eye. The nurse is on her way somewhere, but she pauses as Mrs Busby asks, urgently, 'How is she?'

'She's quiet now,' the nurse says. 'She's sleeping.'

Patsy's hand is on Mrs Busby's arm. 'Do you think - can I sit with her?' she asks.

'She's very poorly,' Mrs Busby shakes her head.

'Just for five minutes?'

'No, I don't - ' Mrs Busby is saying, but the words are barely out before the familiar tones of her husband's sonorous voice are echoing down the corridor.

'There you are,' Mr Busby says as he approaches, side by side with a young man in some kind of hospital uniform. Not a doctor. A porter, maybe? 'This young man has promised to to direct us to the canteen.'

Mrs Busby shakes her head.

'Come on old girl,' her husband murmurs. 'You have to eat.'

'David, I can't leave her,' she protests.

(Out of the corner of her eye she sees a sombre greeting between Patsy and the porter fellow.

'Hello, Eric,' Patsy says.

'Nurse Mount,' the man nods in reply.

Of course, Mrs Busby remembers. She used to work here too.)

'Now then,' David is saying. 'We haven't eaten since breakfast. You need to keep your strength up for - ' He gestures towards the door, behind which their daughter lies.

'I can sit with her,' Patsy, hovering nearby, takes her chance, desperately. 'If you're worried about her being on her own, I can sit with her.'

Mrs Busby is forced to make introductions she had been half-hoping to avoid. 'David, this is Patsy. Delia's friend. From the cubs,' she manages to say. 'My husband - Delia's father,' she turns to Patsy.

'Nice to meet you,' David says, holding out a hand. 'Although such a shame that it's under these circumstances.' There's no reason for him not to be pleasant to someone introduced to him as Delia's friend. Mrs Busby's kept him ignorant of her fears; there are things a mother might be privy to that a father should never know. And this is one of them.

'But we couldn't impose,' Mrs Busby says to Patsy, as if she is only a woman Delia knows from the cubs. As if sitting with Delia would be a gross inconvenience to Patsy, rather than the thing she wants most to do in the entire world.

'It'd be no imposition,' Patsy insists. 'I can - I can send for you, if anything happens.' She gestures towards the porter, who nods amiably.

'You're a nurse, are you, Miss Mount, is it?' David is saying. 'See - she's in good hands. We'll be half an hour. Less, probably.'

He's tired, exhausted with the long drive on unfamiliar, busy roads. And it has been a long time since they last ate. Reluctantly she agrees.

With a small smile, a quiet 'Thank you', Patsy's away and through the swing door into the ward.

Mrs Busby can't help but follow her, as far as the door at least.

Delia's dozing peacefully now, the violent spasms of a short while ago subsided under the miracle of sedation. Patsy approaches the bed, approaches Delia. Stands silently at her side for a moment, and then, seemingly without a thought of who might be watching, gently reaches down to brush wayward hair from Delia's face. She moves to pick up the hand that's lying nearest to her on top of the bedspread and holds it not with one hand but with two, completely enveloping it in her own. Her posture is still, otherwise, like she's trying to hold herself together.

Mrs Busby turns away, feeling like an intruder. She's not happy about letting Patsy in to see Delia but she's not sure what more she could have done about it. What can she say? How can she protest about it without condemning her daughter too?

'Come on, old girl,' David says, and leads her away.

* * *

When she returns, half an hour later, she can hear voices as she pushes the ward door. Delia must have woken. Mrs Busby's filled with a sudden fear. What if she remembers that woman and yet doesn't remember her own mother?

Delia looks at her as she approaches, blinks, confused. Mrs Busby's heart, not yet steeled against it, breaks again at the sight of the frail girl where her strong daughter should be. The resilient kid she mothered though chicken pox and mumps and a broken arm, who took a fall and bounced back stronger is now a poor broken child, a ghost, a stranger.

'Are you a nurse?' the child asks, in a voice that's a distant relative of Delia's own.

She knows what to expect. But it's one thing knowing it and another experiencing it. 'I'm your mam,' she says, but Delia barely registers it.

'Can you help this girl?' she asks instead.

'This is Patsy, cariad,' Mrs Busby says, and for a moment, as the tears well up, she wills her daughter, silently, to remember this woman: remember her, even if you don't remember me, she begs; you might not have seen me for much of the last five years, but you've certainly seen her.

But Delia recognizes neither of them.

When her father arrives a few moments later, she doesn't recognize him either.

From across the room, the ward sister coughs: points to a sign. Only two visitors at a time, and family take precedence. Mrs Busby's glad for the rules. Patsy stands, makes way for Mr Busby.

'Good bye, Delia,' she says sadly.

'Good bye,' Delia automatically replies, but stumbles when she tries to remember the name of the woman she's speaking to.

'Patsy,' her father, taking the seat Patsy's just got up from, supplies. Delia looks at him, bewildered.

* * *

Another half an hour, and Delia's dozing again. Mrs Busby stands to stretch her legs. Through the glass of the swing door, she sees a figure on a bench outside. Mrs Busby frowns. She thought she'd left.

'She's still here.'

'Who?' David asks.

'Patsy,' she says. 'Delia's friend.'

'Poor girl,' David says. 'Must have been a shock to her too. Perhaps - maybe you should talk to her?'

Mr Busby has an unwavering faith in his wife's good nature, in her ability to offer comfort to those in need. Mrs Busby isn't always sure his faith in her is warranted. She dismisses the idea at first, but then reconsiders. Perhaps there are things she can say. Perhaps there are things she ought to say.

As she pushes the door open, Patsy's on her feet.

'Is Delia -' Patsy says, fear in her eyes.

'No change,' Mrs Busby says, sitting on the chair that Patsy's just vacated. She pats the seat next to her. 'Sit with me.'

She finds herself trying to comfort Patsy. Patsy evidently cares for her daughter: that's something, even if Mrs Busby doesn't like it one bit.

'We're having to settle for hope,' she says, though she's not sure she's willing to include Patsy in that 'we'. When she tells her she's taking her home, when she discourages Patsy from hoping that she might visit, she's not doing it to be cruel, or at least, she doesn't think she is. She's doing it for both of them, for both girls: to give each of them the chance to move on from this hold they seem to have - or have had? - over each other. If Delia can't remember Patsy, then how could she explain her visits? It would be better for this woman, this Patsy, to forget about Delia, as Delia's forgotten about Patsy. It would be a fresh start for the pair of them. The chance of a normal life.

It'll hurt for a while, no doubt: this Patsy seems genuine in her affection for Delia, and it'll be harder for her, since she won't have forgotten what they've been to each other like Delia has. But it'll be better for her, for the both of them, in the long run.

She doesn't say this, of course. But, when she says she's taking her daughter home, when she discourages Patsy from visiting, it's what she means.

Patsy stands, erratically and leaves without looking back. Mrs Busby wonders if she's done enough to put her off. She's not sure that she has.


	2. Chapter 2

**a/n: thanks for the lovely reviews - much appreciated! I said I thought this was going to be in three parts. Turns out it's going to be a bit longer. Not sure how long, but yeah, longer than three parts.**

Patsy is, as Mrs Busby feared, persistent. For the next three days she's there each evening at visiting time, holding back respectfully but stubbornly, determinedly, conspiciously there all the same. Her face is a facade withholding who knows what emotions, but occasionally, if she catches her at the right moment, Mrs Busby gets a glimpse of what she might be feeling. The pain's all in her eyes.

In that she's quite unlike Delia. Delia's every emotion shows on her face or in her demeanor, as it always has. Now, what Delia's mainly showing is confusion. Fear. Anxiety. An upsetting mix of all three.

During the evening visiting times, David encourages her to invite Patsy in while he steps out so she can take his seat. She can't tell her husband why she doesn't want Patsy there, and she can't tell him she wants him to stay in the room either, because seeing his daughter like this is destroying him.

He's struggling with Delia's condition, with the seizures, with her broken and bruised body. He prefers it when she's asleep, because then he can pretend that, give or take a bruise or two, a scratch here or there, everything's otherwise alright. When she's asleep, she looks something like she ever did. But when she's awake, when she's struggling to remember who she is and where she is, when she recognizes neither her mother nor her father, she looks like someone completely different.

On the fourth day, after visiting hours in the morning are over, David sets off home, back to Wales. Now they know Delia's not in immediate danger and her recovery will be long and slow, he can't afford to be off work any longer. It's for the best, Mrs Busby thinks: it really has been killing him, seeing Delia like this. He'll cope better with it when he's not confronted with the reality of it every day, when she can report to him on the telephone (the public one in the village - why did they never have a line of their own put in? she wonders helplessly), when she can soften the harsh edges of Delia's distress, where she can give him hope (even if she's not sure she believes it herself) that Delia'll recover.

Ordinarily she'd be aghast at the thought of him being at home on his own, but right now she's got bigger things to worry about. He'll just have to shift for himself. Her sister'll pop in, each day, drop him off a stew or a pie so he won't go hungry, take away his laundry, do his ironing. Make sure he's feeding the dog.

That evening, then, without David occupying the second of the two chairs, she has no excuse to turn Patsy away. She can't refuse her staying for the full hour and a half either. It turns out, though, that she's surprisingly grateful for Patsy being there. Now she's waved David off, she's alone in this foreign place where there's no-one she can turn to with her fears and anxieties, no-one to commiserate with over the news that Delia's had another seizure, no-one to keep her company in watching warily as Delia drifts in and out of drowsiness - no-one but Patsy.

That evening, she talks, vaguely, about getting Delia home, tries to interest her daughter in the concept in the intervals she's awake, tries not to see the anguish in Patsy's eyes. 'It's what the specialist recommended,' she says, to reassure herself, to block out the submerged misery that Patsy's trying not to emanate. What she doesn't mention is what the doctors have said following the seizure that Delia had that afternoon: that they want Delia to get stronger first before they think of moving her, that they want to monitor the seizures for longer - another week, two even. She's not sure when she'll get her daughter home to Wales now, but she disguises that uncertainty, talking to Delia of the village, trying to stir some memory of home. As her daughter drifts in and out of sleep, it feels, in a disjointed way, like she's telling her a bedtime story. It's one that seems as unachievable as any fairy tale, this story in which Delia comes home, this story in which Delia remembers.

But the next morning, the fifth day after the accident, Delia seems much brighter, much stronger. The doctors are easing off the sedatives and for the first time since Mrs Busby arrived in London, Delia doesn't spend more of visiting time asleep than awake. This presents a new challenge. As she's getting stronger, Delia being Delia (even though Delia can't remember what Delia's like), she's getting bored and restless. Delia wants to talk, but doing so is difficult, Mrs Busby discovers. The specialist has warned Mrs Busby not to overload Delia with information, so she tries to keep their talk light, but Delia's memory is such that it makes maintaining small talk impossible: conversation is very one-sided when the person you're talking to has no experience of anything outside of the four walls within which they're confined. Mrs Busby chats about relatives, about the dog, about the village, and Delia makes appropriate noises of interest, tries to follow the thread, but Mrs Busby can't help feeling it's all meaningless to her.

Mrs Busby, then, is glad to see Patsy that evening: despite herself she's pleased to have an ally with whom she can share the challenge of this phase of Delia's recovery.

Patsy sees the change in Delia for herself without Mrs Busby doing much to explain it: she sees the restlessness, the fidgeting, the boredom, and being, apparently, the practical type, she quickly does something practical about it. She disappears for five minutes, and when she returns, she's carrying a sheaf of paper and a couple of pens. When she sees what her plan is, Mrs Busby wishes she'd thought of it herself.

Patsy tries noughts and crosses first. She draws the grid, hands Delia a pen and carefully explains the rules. Delia holds the pen uncertainly and she awkwardly inks in her first cross, but as the game continues and she seems to forget how alienated she is from the world around her, the pen settles into her grip more comfortably. Patsy wins the first game, and the second, but Delia beats her the third time. She laughs in triumph.

Mrs Busby laughs too, in relief, perhaps, more than anything. It's been so long since she heard her daughter laugh she'd almost forgotten the sound. And for once, she allows herself to smile with genuine warmth at Patsy. Patsy blushes and becomes uncomfortable under the gratitude her gaze is conveying; she is saved by Delia sketching out another grid, and determinedly placing a cross in the bottom left corner.

A few more rounds (Patsy wins twice, Delia once) and Mrs Busby is feeling rather more contented than she has done for days. As Delia plays, she seems unconsciously to be returning to herself: as she becomes competitive, tactical instinct rather than a damaged and bruised casualty, her whole being seems more normal, more Delia-like, than it's done since the accident.

Patsy senses it too, and looking at Delia appraisingly, decides to tries a different game. She sets about explaining the rules to Delia. She writes down the alphabet on the sheet of paper and explains how for each letter Delia guesses wrong , she'll draw more and more of the gallows and its little hanged man. She draws one quickly so Delia knows what she means, and then she says that the words in the game that Delia will be trying to work out will be things in the room.

She asks Delia if she wants to play. Delia looks round the room, takes in its objects, seems to be thinking hard. She mouths words to herself - she's naming what she sees, Mrs Busby supposes.

Then Delia nods. Yes, she's willing to try.

_ _ _ Patsy starts with first.

'Easy,' Delia says, getting it quickly, after guessing various letters. BED.

Then CHAIR. DOOR. CLOCK. TABLE.

It's all going well, really well: Delia figures out - or she knows - how to play, and her guessing is sharp and accurate. Mrs Busby's still wondering what _ U R _ A I _ is when Delia guesses CURTAIN and claps her hands excitedly.

They're all giddy with the success, really, when Patsy says, 'How about two words then,' and draws out the blanks: _ _ _ _ _ then _ _ _ _ _

Mrs Busby watches as her daughter judges what's before her. Delia grins: she's confident, she's got the knack of this now. She tries the vowels first. Gets lucky on A, E, I, and U. Not O, though. _E_IA _U_ _ _.

A few more guesses, and the gallows is drawn, and most of the body of the hanged man. _ELIA BU_B_ is now written in the spaces. But Delia's still not getting it. Mrs Busby can see what it is, though, has been able to see it for minutes, and the fact that Delia can't work it out is gripping her with anxiety, is pressing her with a nausea borne of horror. It's a feeling matched in Patsy's eyes, though she's masking it well.

They're saved, all of them, by the ringing of the bell for the end of visiting hour.

Mrs Busby seizes the paper, crumples it up, tosses it in the bin.

Delia's disappointed: she wants to know what the answer was.

'Another time, sweetheart,' her mother says, and kisses her daughter on the forehead. 'I'll see you again in the morning.'

No harm's been done to Delia, as far as she can tell: Delia doesn't know that she doesn't know her own name, or perhaps Delia does know that, in some sense, but she doesn't know that she just showed them that she doesn't know her own name.

Quite a lot of harm, though, has been done to Mrs Busby and Patsy.

Once they're outside of the ward, Mrs Busby turns to Patsy. 'You shouldn't have done that,' she tells her. 'She's not ready. You should have known! You're supposed to be a nurse. Irresponsible, that was. You should be ashamed.' She's so angry with her that she wants to shake her, wants to make her suffer.

But Patsy's already suffering: she's pale, sickened, haunted. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' is all she can manage before she flees.


	3. Chapter 3

The following morning, as Mrs Busby catches Delia's doctor in the corridor for what has become a regular consultation on her daughter's condition, she tells him about the game, about what happened. She's still cross with Patsy, and she's hoping he'll disapprove, that he'll agree how dangerous such games are, that even, perhaps, he'll recognize that Patsy is too dangerous an influence to be around her daughter, and he'll recommend that she must stay away. But no. It seems he's impressed with Patsy's idea. 'Needs to be done carefully, of course, but there's no reason why Delia shouldn't be encouraged to play such games,' is what the doctor says. 'A good way of engaging her short term memory, of developing focus and concentration. Nothing too taxing but all in all it's a good idea of Nurse Mount's.'

She's annoyed that in this skirmish over who knows what's best for Delia, it's herself and not Patsy who's come off worst, so despite what the doctor has said, when she enters Delia's ward, she doesn't go near the pen and paper that's in the bedside cabinet. She insists on talking to her daughter instead. She puts her effort into telling Delia about herself, trying to get her to remember: not to jog the memories she once had, but to form new ones. She focuses on basic facts about Delia: her name, where she lives, who her mother is. She doesn't say anything about Patsy.

Perhaps Patsy won't be coming back, anyway, Mrs Busby thinks. After last night, after that demonstration of just how far from normal Delia is, Patsy might finally have realized there's no point her carrying on with this whole performance.

* * *

Patsy is persistent, though. That evening, prompt as usual, she arrives with a bag from which, with careful cheerfulness, she withdraws a battered cardboard box containing snakes and ladders and a wooden box of dominoes. Patsy turns to Mrs Busby to ask her permission, but Delia's already seized on the board game and wants to know how to play, and Mrs Busby hasn't the heart to kill the light that's ignited in her daughter's eyes. She shrugs, helplessly. Do what you like, the gesture is meant to convey. You will anyway, no matter what I say or do.

The worst of her mood isn't allowed to stay for long, though, because Delia - who's now showing both of them some recognition, if only that born of a few days' acquaintance, not an entire lifetime's - is cajoling her to play. When her daughter was a child, she always struggled to resist her when she wheedled like this, and she can't resist it now.

All things considered, the evening passes pleasantly. There's an unspoken truce between herself and Patsy, but really, neither of them is thinking much of the other because they're both captivated by Delia and the miracle that happens as they play. Even more so than the day before, as she plays Delia's taken out of herself and made to forget that she can't remember. As she simply exists in the moment she is beginning to recover herself. When the game's over, she transforms, once more, into the lost child that she's become - but each time, perhaps, she's a little less lost than she was before, a little less bewildered, a little more like her own self.

* * *

On the morning of the next day, another miracle.

'Hello...Mam,' Delia says, as Mrs Busby enters the room. Delia says it almost, but not quite, without the questioning inflection that hints at her uncertainty.

It's not the innate recognition of a child to its mother, but it's recall of a kind, a memory sustained for a day or so. It's the longest she's retained that information. Tears rise in Mrs Busby's eyes, because it's more, perhaps, than at times over this past week she's been allowing herself to hope for.

'Good morning, Delia love,' she says, blinking hard.

Delia's looking past her now, as if she's expecting someone else to appear.

'Where's ... ' Delia pauses, going inside herself to dredge for the name. 'P - Patsy?' she says.

Mrs Busby feels her face contort. The elation that Delia's finally remembering who she is is mixed with a clench of panic at who - or what - she's also remembering. She shakes herself, though, reminds herself that Delia's remembering the Patsy of this week, the Patsy who comes to cheer her up each evening by playing games with her. She's not remembering the Patsy from before this week, the Patsy she did God knows what with.

'She's at work, sweetheart. She'll come along to visit you this evening,' Mrs Busby manages to say, in as neutral a tone as possible.

'Oh,' Delia says. Then, 'She's a - she's a nurse, isn't she? And this is a hospital, isn't it?'

Again, it's not a memory from before the accident, but one from the day before, when - between games of snakes and ladders - Patsy had been telling Delia a little about herself.

'Yes, she is a nurse. And yes, this is a hospital. That's right, darling.'

'Does she work here?' Delia asks.

'She used to, I believe,' Mrs Busby says. And she wants to add 'And you're a nurse too, and you worked here too' but they've been warned not to force information that might distress her daughter, so she doesn't.

'She's coming tonight?' Delia says, wanting reassurance.

'Yes, cariad,' Mrs Busby replies. 'She'll be here.'

It's wonderful, of course, that Delia's starting to retain things, but quite a large part of Mrs Busby wishes that Delia wouldn't remember Patsy, even if it is only the Patsy of this week she's remembering. But now, slowly, Mrs Busby's becoming anxious: what if tonight's the evening Patsy realizes she's had enough of Delia? What if tonight's the night she decides to stay at home, or to go out with friends who have memories that stretch back further than two days, with friends who are not confined to a tiny bed in a dingy room, with friends who are not quite this helpless? Patsy better not let Delia down, she thinks: if Patsy was going to leave Delia hanging, she ought to have done it when Delia couldn't remember her, not now she can. She should have done it when Delia wouldn't have been able to wonder why the woman who's been visiting her has suddenly disappeared.

If her daughter remembers Patsy, and Patsy doesn't show up, there'll be hell to pay, Mrs Busby vows.

* * *

But Patsy does turn up, of course.

'Hello, Patsy,' Delia says, unprompted and the questioning inflection barely there at all.

Patsy looks at Delia, at Mrs Busby, at Delia again.

'She remembers,' Mrs Busby says.

Patsy seems to catch her breath, apparently uncertain what it is that Delia remembers.

'She remembers yesterday, I mean,' Mrs Busby clarifies. 'She remembered who I was, too.' She needs to make that clear. It's not just Patsy that Delia remembers. She remembers her mam too.

For this evening's entertainment, Patsy's brought a pack of cards.

'Oh no, I'm terrible at cards,' Mrs Busby says. 'I can never remember the rules.'

'That'll make two of us,' Delia quips, and for a moment Mrs Busby and Patsy stare at her, stunned at the joke she's just made, before Patsy laughs out loud, and Mrs Busby joins in, and in the end they have to be shushed by the ward sister because they're making so much noise.

When they're quieter, and Patsy's dealing the cards, she explains that she's also brought cake, in a tin in her bag. 'It's Mrs B's finest' she says, as she encourages Delia to open the tin. Mrs B, Patsy explains, is the housekeeper of her lodgings and is famous for her cakes throughout Poplar, and one of the biggest fans of Mrs B's cake is one of the women who lives with Patsy; this woman has a nose like no other for sniffing out cake, Patsy says, and that's why this cake, which Mrs B had baked especially for Delia, has a rather large slice missing from it.

It sounds a rather improbable story, Mrs Busby thinks, but it's very nice cake.

It's another pleasant evening, all things considered, as they eat cake, and play cards, and Mrs Busby and Delia try to outdo each other in forgetting the rules of the game.

* * *

By unspoken agreement, after the terrifying experience of three days ago, the game of hangman has been laid aside. But on the evening of the eighth day, with Delia so much stronger now, so much more alert, Patsy wants to try it again.

As she realizes what Patsy's doing, Mrs Busby feels a rising alarm. She shakes her head at her, tries to convey that it's too soon for that, it's pushing Delia too far, too quickly, again. But if Patsy sees the look, if she understands it, she ignores it.

Delia's willing to play: her memory of the first game is a little hazy, so Patsy reminds her of the rules. Patsy broadens the scope. 'Last time we played it,' she says 'we only did words of things in this room. Today, they could be anything.'

'Let's play,' Delia says, never having been one to shirk a challenge.

Mrs Busby watches on as they play. She feels that clutch of anxiety in her chest once more, that nausea that she felt before: this time she's on guard, ready to step in if Patsy pushes too hard.

Delia gets HOSPITAL and NURSE pretty quickly, LONDON and WALES after a bit more thinking. After ORANGE and TELEPHONE, she wants the pen for herself. It takes some concentration, some careful counting on her fingers, but eventually she's ready. She draws five neat lines drawn on the paper.

'A', Patsy says.

Delia nods and writes it in. _ A _ _ _ . Then, for a moment she seems confused, as if she's doubting herself. Mrs Busby holds her breath, is poised, ready to stop this. But Delia shakes her head and dispels the doubts, trusting to something inside herself.

Patsy works through all the other vowels to no avail: the framework of the gallows is drawn, neatly. Delia's not forgotten how to draw, then, not forgotten how to hold a pen: there's a familiar angle to the drawing, a familiar slope to the letters.

Delia's drawing the body before Patsy scores another hit.

'S'.

'That took you long enough,' Delia says, with something like mock-exasperation. _ A _ S _ is what she's now written.

The body nearly has all its limbs before Patsy says 'T'.

Delia writes it in, and Patsy looks appraisingly at it, twisting her mouth as she does so. 'P' she says. Then 'Y'.

Delia's looking pleased with herself, while Patsy's smiling fit to burst. Mrs Busby, too, allows herself to smile with them, but she's beginning to feel anxious about Delia doing too much, and getting over-excited. Besides, it's getting late, it's nearly time to go.

'Well done, dear,' she says. 'But maybe it's time to put these things away until tomorrow?'

But Delia wants another go. She wants her mother to play this time. Mrs Busby fusses and tuts, but Delia's already drawn three short lines on the paper _ _ _ . With Delia looking at her imploringly she has to give in.

'I don't know, dear,' Mrs Busby says. 'S?'

Delia grins, shakes her head. It takes Mrs Busby a few more goes before she remembers the tactic that had served her daughter well. Vowels. 'A', she says, and there's a nod from Delia.

_ A _

'I'll give you a clue,' Delia says, when Mrs Busby's lost nearly all her lives. 'They're both the same, those two missing letters.'

'Oh,' Patsy says, and there's a sudden light in her eyes and a pleased look on her face, as if she's worked it out. Delia sees that and, looking sternly at her, shakes her head. She wants Mrs Busby to work it out for herself, but for a moment or too that secret shared communication between her daughter and this woman makes her too cross to think. But Delia's looking encouragingly at her, and she can feel Patsy willing her on too. It takes her another thirty seconds or so. Suddenly, she thinks she sees it.

'M?' she says, uncertain.

Delia laughs as she pens in the letters. 'Finally, Mam,' she says. 'Finally.'

Mrs Busby laughs too.


	4. Chapter 4

Over the past week or so, as her absolute terror about her daughter's condition has subsided to something more manageable, Mrs Busby's become increasingly aware of her surroundings: more specifically, of the damp, the mould, and the stink of someone else's boiled fish that permeates the boarding house in which she's staying. They'd had to hastily arrange their lodgings the night they'd arrived, and then, when their thoughts had been distracted by panic about their daughter, it had seemed – well, not inviting, not pleasant, but tolerable. But now, on the ninth day after Delia's accident, with Delia visibly improving every day (and not having had a seizure for five days, touch wood), Mrs Busby has reached her breaking point. She really can't stay there any longer without going mad.

It's a far cry from her warm and immaculately spotless home. She misses Wales.

She can cope with it at night, more or less, but it's during the day, in the long, lonely stretches between visiting time in the morning and visiting time in the evening that it affects her most. Were she in London for any reason other than the one that's brought her here (and were she another person entirely) she thinks she might have used this opportunity to explore the city, to go to museums and galleries, to see parks and palaces, to visit the famous shopping streets. But given the circumstances and given the person she is (or the person she's become, somewhere along the way) all of that is (or seems) out of bounds. In between visiting time in the morning and visiting time in the evening, she'd just like somewhere comfortable she can return to, somewhere to sit, to potter, to knit, to read, to while away the hours until it's time to see Delia.

And she'd like to be somewhere where the food isn't so unrelentingly awful.

If David were here, she'd ask him to find somewhere new for them to stay. But David's not here. He's at home, coping, so he tells her each evening on the telephone, managing reasonably successfully to do the washing up, to walk the dog, to get himself up and ready for work each morning. He's even taken to making his own packed lunches. The thought of her husband making himself at home in her kitchen is one she finds half-amusing, half-terrifying: the place'll be in an absolute state when she gets back.

She misses David.

Without David here, the problem of the boarding house is one she's going to have to solve by herself.

She's not one usually to ask for help but it seems silly not to get some local advice, so, that evening, over hands of cards (her own ability to remember the rules of the game improving as her daughter's does) she says to Patsy, 'You must know the area around here well.'

'I cycle most of it on a daily basis,' Patsy agrees.

'I don't suppose you know of a decent guesthouse in the area, do you? The place I'm staying –' she pulls a face, the better to convey her disgust with the place.

'Oh,' Patsy says, understanding. 'Lodgings in London can be hit and miss.'

Mrs Busby outlines her complaints: the damp, the mould, the smell, the noise, her profound but ill-defined suspicions about some of the other residents…Delia, to whom the world outside this room is still, largely, a great unknown, seems enthralled by the tale.

'Why don't you stay with us?' Patsy says, after reflecting for a moment.

'In the flat?' The words are said before Mrs Busby has a chance to stop herself.

Patsy seems to wince. The flat is a thing that neither of them have yet spoken about. Mrs Busby's not even sure they found a flat, let alone moved into it. She only knows about it from a letter that had arrived in Wales just a day before Delia's accident had summoned her to London. Lots of girls share flats, Delia had written - whether to convince herself or her mother - and it'll be so much more comfortable having a real home rather than a single room in the nurses home.

She'd read the letter with a creeping sense of dread. It seems a lifetime ago. It's hard to remember, now, that time when the worst thing she could imagine happening to her daughter was her deciding to share a flat with another woman. She's been wondering whether, if she were given the chance by some fairy godmother, whether she would trade those pre-accident fears about what Delia was getting up to in London for this post-accident horror of amnesia. She's not sure. She might. But it's a pointless thing to think about, anyway, because she can't turn back time, she can't go back and avert Delia's accident.

'I'm not staying there,' Patsy says quietly. 'Not without - ' She stops. Her eyes flick almost imperceptibly to Delia. Mrs Busby understands what she means, what she can't say. 'No,' Patsy continues in her normal voice, covering over the moment of awkwardness. 'Stay with us at Nonnatus, I mean. Sister Julienne was saying just the other day that you'd be more than welcome to stay with us.'

'Don't you live in a nurse's home like – ' Like Delia does, or did, Mrs Busby almost says, but doesn't. Like Patsy, she's treading carefully on the subject of Delia's life before the accident for all sorts of reasons. She knows the place Delia lives (lived?) is strict on visitors and has no space for when family came to visit. That, at least, was the excuse that Delia had made when she had last proposed making a visit.

'No,' Patsy says. 'I used to, but now – well – I live in a convent. And Sister Julienne, the Sister-in-charge, says you're very welcome to stay.'

Mrs Busby and Delia turn to her, both stunned. That Patsy lives in a convent is clearly news to them both.

'You don't look like a nun,' Delia says, looking Patsy over with an appraising grin.

'Don't worry, I'm not,' Patsy grins back.

Mrs Busby dithers for a moment, weighing up the offer. It would be an easy way out of her current lodgings, but she feels awkward about taking this favour from someone she feels so ambivalent about. But Patsy's insistent, and Mrs Busby's current lodgings are so damp - and expensive! - and the food so bad, that she's desperate to get out of there.

'Go on,' Delia says, as she's wavering. 'I'm sure living with Patsy can't be as bad as where you're staying now.'

'I won't swear to it never being cold or damp,' Patsy says, 'but it doesn't usually smell of boiled fish. And I think it's probably nearer to the hospital than where you are now'.

That settles it. It's all arranged for the following evening: Mrs Busby'll give her landlady notice (she fears she'll be charged for the rest of the week but it's a price she's willing to pay to get out of there) and Patsy will come and meet her after her shift, and take her to Nonnatus. And then they'll come and visit Delia.

Delia, for her part, seems thrilled at the idea of her two companions living together. Whether her pre-accident self would be quite so pleased, Mrs Busby's not so sure, but things have changed since then, in so many ways.

* * *

Waiting on the steps of her boarding house for Patsy to meet her as arranged Mrs Busby watches a good-looking couple approach. It's not until they've almost reached her that the woman waves to her and she realizes it's Patsy. She hadn't recognized her in her uniform, hadn't expected to see her in the company of a young, handsome man.

She looks appraisingly at the pair of them, and wonders.

'This is Tom,' Patsy says. 'The Reverend Hereward, rather. He's offered to give us a lift to Nonnatus.'

'Good evening, vicar,' Mrs Busby replies.

'Call me Tom, Mrs Busby,' the man says, shaking her hand. 'I was so sorry to hear about what happened to Delia. She's been in my prayers.'

'Thank you,' she manages to say, feeling a little overcome at this concern from a complete stranger. Patsy takes her suitcase from her, and Tom leads them around the corner to where his car is parked.

Fifteen minutes later and they're at Nonnatus House. The vicar melts away into the background as she's welcomed in by a nun, the Sister-in-charge that Patsy had mentioned the day before. She's kind but efficient in her greeting.

'You're very welcome to stay here for as long as you need,' Sister Julienne tells her. 'Nurse Mount will show you to your room, and give you a tour of the amenities, such as they are. After that it'll be time for you both to leave for the hospital, I suspect. By the time you get back, it'll be compline so we won't have a chance to get to know each other properly this evening, but I was hoping you might join me for a cup of tea tomorrow morning?'

'Don't worry,' Patsy says conspiratorially, as she leads Mrs Busby away, making her wonder, anxiously, how much worry she had been conveying in her demeanour. 'You haven't been summoned to the headmistress for a telling-off. She just wants to make sure that you know how welcome you are.'

Then Patsy takes her up through the building – a grand old, wood-panelled place – to her own room. Putting her case down, Patsy says, 'I'll leave you to get settled while I run and get changed', and then disappears.

Ten minutes later, she's just finished putting her things neatly in drawers when there's a knock on her door and Patsy's back.

'Time's escaping us, rather' she explains. 'So we better get a move on. Nurse Crane has agreed to run us to the hospital so we won't be late.'

* * *

At the hospital, Delia wants to know all about Nonnatus House, this place where they're both now living.

'I've hardly seen it myself,' Mrs Busby says, shaking her head.

It's been a whirlwind, rather, the last couple of hours, and Mrs Busby doesn't know what to think about it. She can't put it into words, not quite, not yet, but somehow, for the first time since she arrived in London, she's starting to feel like part of a community. A vicar, a nun, a nurse – people she doesn't know at all – have shown her care and concern, have shown that same care and concern for her daughter.

For that she is grateful.


	5. Chapter 5

When she comes down for breakfast the following morning, she's a little taken aback at how many of them there are already seated around a long table: there are two or three nurses, three or four nuns, and to her surprise, a policeman.

'You must be Mrs Busby,' one of the older nuns says. 'Don't just stand there, come and sit down, have some breakfast.'

Nurse Crane, the nurse she met the night before, pats the vacant seat next to her. 'Sit down next to me, dear,' she says. 'Would you like some tea? Help yourself to toast or porridge.'

Mrs Busby is spooning porridge into her bowl and trying to fix names to faces as Nurse Crane makes introductions when she becomes, suddenly, very aware that the elderly nun sat on her other side is regarding her with some considerable curiosity.

'Ar lan y môr mae pob rinweddau / Ar lan y môr mae nghariad innau,' the nun says, rather cryptically, but with a good sense of the rhythms and the pronunciation of the language.

'Now, Sister Monica Joan,' the nun who'd first welcomed her into the room – Sister Evangelina, was it? - says. 'Leave Mrs Busby to eat her breakfast in peace. It's much too early to be quoting poetry at people.' She turns to Mrs Busby. 'Don't mind her,' she says. 'She did that to Nurse Busby too, when she found out she was Welsh. I don't know why. She has a _thing_ about Wales.'

'It was not the same lines', the older nun protests indignantly. 'I do not repeat myself.'

So Delia's been here, Mrs Busby thinks, as the two nuns continue to squabble. Here to breakfast? Surely not. But Delia's met these people. Been introduced to them as Patsy's friend, no doubt. She wonders what these people make of her daughter, of her _friendship_ with Patsy. Do they understand the truth about it? They can't do, surely. Patsy seems much more restrained, more discreet than her daughter. And as for Delia – well, the clues that a mother might pick up are perhaps such that a passing acquaintance would not register.

These thoughts are cut off by a younger nun – Winnie? Winifred?- asking, 'How is Nurse Busby, if I can ask? It was such a terrible shock to us all when we heard what happened.'

The chatter around the table falls silent. They're all looking at her expectantly.

'She's better, much better,' Mrs Busby says.

'Has her memory returned?' the nun presses.

Mrs Busby looks down into her porridge. 'No.'

'Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.' Sister Monica Joan intones, to glares from those around her.

The moment's becoming oppressive, and they're all grateful for the change of subject that is provided as Patsy bustles into the room, leans over the table and grabs a couple of slices of toast.

Looking up from her porridge, Mrs Busby smiles at her, briefly, is glad to see a familiar face in this forest of strangers.

'You're cutting it fine, Nurse Mount,' Sister Evangelina says, before launching into a lecture about time-keeping. Mrs Busby's eyes widen in alarm at the scolding Patsy's receiving.

When Sister Evangelina has wound down a little and pauses to take a breath, Patsy uses the opportunity to calmly interject. 'I was with Sister Julienne,' she says.

'Well,' Sister Evangelina says, her tirade arrested, slightly, by that. 'You better get that toast down you quick or you'll be late for your rounds.'

Patsy brushes her hands together to get rid of the crumbs. 'Done,' she says, and turns on her heels.

'That counts for the rest of you too,' Sister Evangelina says, standing up and looking round the table now. 'Enough of this dawdling. There's work to be done!'

'Don't worry about Sister Evangelina: her bark's worse than her bite, and her bark's worse than usual before she's had her third cup of tea of the day,' one of the nurses – the blonde one - confides to Mrs Busby as they're getting up from the table. 'I'm Trixie by the way. Now, Patsy has to rush off, but she asked me to make sure you know the way to the hospital from here. I can show you on the map, if you like.'

Trixie's outlining the route on the big map that they've got pinned to the wall in one of the corridors, when Sister Julienne comes to meet them.

'Mrs Busby, do you have time for that cup of tea I promised you yesterday? Visiting hours aren't until half past ten, I believe, so you've plenty of time.'

Sister Julienne's office provides a peaceful respite after the frenzy of breakfast. 'They can be a bit much first thing in the morning, if you're not used to it,' Sister Julienne says sympathetically, as she invites Mrs Busby to sit down.

Flustered, Mrs Busby says something, awkwardly, about nuns and silence.

'There are times for silence, yes.' Sister Julienne replies, pouring out the tea. 'Silence can be a very valuable gift. But mealtimes, as a rule, are not the time for silence in a community like ours.'

Nervous at first under Sister Julienne's gentle enquiries, Mrs Busby soon finds herself spilling out her fears about Delia to this woman she barely knows: her fears about her injuries, her illness, at least. Not her fears about everything, of course. There are some things she won't say.

Sister Julienne is kind, reassuring, warm: after half an hour in her company Mrs Busby feels oddly refreshed. But she's anxious about losing her way on the unfamiliar route to the hospital and being late for visiting time (despite Trixie's very clear directions), so rather sooner than she needs to, she makes her apologies and sets off for the bus to the hospital.

* * *

When she returns to Nonnatus House at lunchtime, she is better prepared for the back and forth between the women sat round the table. She finds herself interested in their conversation, under all of which runs a brisk and committed professionalism. Patsy, who looked like a child that first day she met her, now looks like the competent professional woman she must be as she debates some point of procedure with Sister Evangelina. She seems to be succeeding in convincing the forthright nun into seeing the issue from her perspective, the scolding of this morning apparently forgotten by them both.

Mrs Busby finds herself more than a little in awe of these women, who all seem to be fierce, bold and brave, determined and passionate in what they do: she, who married at 19, who has spent most of her life at home in a tiny Welsh village, feels like a timid little thing beside them. She can see why her daughter - as fierce, bold, and brave, as determined and passionate as anyone in the world - wanted to be one of them. She can see, perhaps like she's never seen before, how well her daughter must have fitted into this life.

* * *

After lunch she goes to sit in the parlour with her knitting. She feels anxiously like she's trespassing, but 'Make yourself at home' Sister Julienne had said that morning, so she's trying to.

She's been there for ten minutes or so when Nurse Crane comes in.

'I'm on telephone duty,' the nurse says, 'but I can hear it ring from here as well as I can from over there, so I've come to see if you wanted some company.'

As she's making to sit down, Nurse Crane tuts crossly and stands again. 'Those girls. Will they never tidy up after themselves properly!'

Mrs Busby turns to see what it is that Nurse Crane is glaring at. In the corner of the room there's a cardboard box, tipped on its side. From it is spilling a mix of tinsel and scraps of cloth.

Christmas is just a month or so away, Mrs Busby remembers. She'd forgotten all about it. 'It's a bit soon to be putting up decorations, isn't it?' she says, as Nurse Crane sets about putting everything back in the box and making the room neat again.

'It's for the Christmas play,' she explains. 'Nurse Franklin and Nurse Gilbert have taken over the running of it from Nurse Mount while – well, while Nurse Mount has more important things on her mind.'

Mrs Busby thinks she detects a look in Nurse Crane's eye that suggests she knows very well what's going on with Delia and Patsy but that she's not going to put it into words. '

'And last night,' she continues instead, 'they got a little ahead of themselves in their excitement about planning the costumes. From what I understand they – Nurse Mount and Nurse Bu – and your daughter – had plans to make the show into a pantomime, instead of the usual nativity, but I'm afraid Nurse Franklin and Nurse Gilbert have gone back on that and are planning something more traditional.'

'A pantomime?' Mrs Busby asks.

'It was Nurse Busby's idea, I believe. But it's probably for the best,' Nurse Crane says. 'I did say to Nurse Mount that a pantomime struck me as a little ambitious for a group of under twelves.'

As Nurse Crane continues to chat, Mrs Busby begins another row on her knitting. She smiles to herself, imagining how it must have been, Delia coaxing a much more cautious Patsy into the idea of the pantomime. Delia can be very hard to turn down when she sets her mind on a thing. She suspects that's something that Patsy's very well aware of.

* * *

 **Notes** : Sister Monica Joan's first quotation is from 'Ar Lan y Môr' ('Beside the Sea') (transl: 'Beside the sea are all things fairest / Beside the sea is found my dearest', taken from Wikipedia).

Her second quotation is from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's well-known 'Do not go gentle into that good night.'


	6. Chapter 6

**a/n: this is the second chapter I'm posting today because I want to get this finished before the Christmas special makes it all redundant, and I don't think I'll manage to do that if I don't double post today.**

Before lunch the following day, just as she's just got off the bus from the hospital, Mrs Busby hears a shout from across the road. It's Patsy, on her bike. Carefully, Patsy steers her way over, and hops off the bike, apparently intending to walk with her the short distance to Nonnatus.

'How was she?' Patsy wants to know.

'Much the same,' Mrs Busby says. 'Getting restless. When I got there she was trying to convince the nurse to let her get up and out of bed, to go for a walk around the hospital.'

Patsy laughs. 'Which nurse?'

'The fair haired one. With the – what do you call it - Cockney accent.'

'Ah, Irene,' Patsy nods. 'They used to work together. She knows what Delia's like – she won't stand any nonsense from her - any attempts at escaping or the like.'

'Well she said, the nurse, that if the doctors agree with it, I might be able to take her out tomorrow morning, in a wheelchair. Just as far as the grounds. For a change of scene, you know. To stop her climbing the walls quite so much.'

'Oh,' Patsy says, and is thoughtful for a moment. 'I could show you a nice place to take her. The grounds of the hospital are a bit bleak for the most part, but there's a nice spot where we used to have lunch sometimes, when I worked there. I'll show you this evening.'

They've reached Nonnatus by this point, and Mrs Busby waits while Patsy parks her bike. Patsy's been on the district rounds, Mrs Busby remembers. That's what Nurse Crane had called them, yesterday, as they'd been chatting. She'd said they were viewed by the younger nurses as the short straw, boringly routine compared to the excitement of midwifery - one insulin injection after another – but, Nurse Crane had let slip, Patsy had asked to be given this duty for the foreseeable future, for as long as Delia was in hospital at least, because the hours were so much more regular than being on the midwifery rota.

That's why Patsy had been late to breakfast that morning, Nurse Crane had explained – Sister Julienne had agreed to her request on condition of regularly reviewing it. 'She's not normally late for things,' Nurse Crane had said, as if to dispel any doubts Mrs Busby may have had about Patsy's professionalism.

'The review – what happened?' Mrs Busby had asked then, suddenly anxious for the answer. 'Is she going to remain on the district rounds?'

'I believe so,' Nurse Crane had said.

Her answer had made Mrs Busby thoughtful, even as it came as a relief: she hadn't realized the delicate negotiations that lay behind Patsy's presence at the hospital each evening. She was, she discovered, grateful that this concession has been made. The last week or so would have been a lot harder if Patsy hadn't been there with her. And, Mrs Busby has to admit, though Delia's made a lot of progress, she's not sure that she would have come so far, so quickly, had Patsy not been there.

Now, as Patsy removes her bag from the rack on the back of her bike, she has a sudden flash of panic. 'You are careful on that thing, aren't you?' she can't help herself from saying. If what happened to Delia were to happen to her too...

'Listen, I have the afternoon off,' Patsy says, instead of answering. 'I was wondering – would you like to come somewhere with me? There's somewhere I'd like to show you. One of Delia's favourite places.'

* * *

After lunch, they take a short bus ride.

'Victoria Park' Mrs Busby reads on a sign as she follows Patsy through a narrow gate in a wall. It's the first green space that she's seen in London, and somehow stepping into it makes her whole being relax. As they progress further into the park, she takes deep breaths. There's still an edge of smog in the air, but as they walk it feels like the atmosphere is getting cleaner and cleaner.

'Delia gets that look too,' Patsy says, watching her.

'What look?' Mrs Busby turns to her.

'The one you have. Like being here feels like freedom.'

Mrs Busby smiles at the turn of phrase. 'It's just so fresh and green compared to - ' she gestures towards what's beyond the park wall. 'London's just so dark, so enclosed, after a lifetime in Wales. Do you come here a lot, you and Delia?'

'Sometimes, on days off.'

They crunch their way through fallen leaves as Patsy leads the way along winding paths. Eventually they reach a small lake. There's a wooden hut to one side, with a jetty to which boats are tied. It looks closed.

They continue to a bench, overlooking the water. They sit.

'Delia lost a shoe in there,' Patsy says, pointing towards the lake. 'The summer before last.'

'How did she…?' Mrs Busby is incredulous.

Patsy shrugs. 'I don't know, I was rowing, she was dangling her feet in the water, and suddenly, no shoe. She had to walk home barefoot.'

Mrs Busby reflects. 'Better that than with one shoe on and one shoe off, I suppose.'

Patsy laughs. 'That's what Delia said.'

'Her father once took her fishing in a lake a bit like this,' Mrs Busby says, after a moment. 'We were on holiday somewhere, North Wales, I think, where David has cousins. She must have been seven or eight. So excited to get a bite on her line, she was, she fell in. David had to go in after her. The pair of them came home drenched.'

Patsy smiles. 'She told me that. That she'd been trying to catch something for your tea, and she'd been so sad when her father made her come home soon to get dry.'

Mrs Busby smiles fondly.

A duck wanders past.

'Oh,' Mrs Busby says. 'We should have brought some bread. Delia used to love feeding the ducks when she was small.'

Patsy is quiet for a moment, then opens her bag and pulls out a couple of slices of stale bread. 'I came prepared.'

They get up from the bench and walk closer to the water's edge. Within moments they're swarmed by a small flock of ducks and a couple of geese.

'It's been such a long time since I did this,' Mrs Busby says, breaking up the bread into neat pieces and throwing it amongst the hungry birds.

'We came three weeks ago,' Patsy says. There's a rueful, wistful look on her face.

With all the bread gone, they start to wander through the park again.

'Last year we tried to fly a kite here,' Patsy says, waving her arm towards a wide, almost treeless stretch of green. 'All Delia's idea, of course. And of course, we managed to get it stuck in the only tree within two hundred yards.' Patsy points.

'She was an absolute horror for climbing trees as a child,' Mrs Busby says, then registers the look on Patsy's face. 'She still is, isn't she?'

Patsy nods. 'Before I knew what was happening she'd thrown her coat at me and was half way up it. She got the kite down no trouble, but the dress she was wearing has never been the same since.'

They continue on, passing a small play area with a slide and a couple of swings.

'When she was five,' Mrs Busby says, 'she declared herself king of the playground in the village. She climbed to the top of the slide and wouldn't get down. And she wouldn't let any of the other children go up or down the slide either. In the end, her father had to climb up and get her. She was in a screaming fury about that, and threatened to expel him from her kingdom. She sulked for a week about it.'

'She must have been – challenging, sometimes, as a child,' Patsy observes.

'Sometimes,' Mrs Busby says. 'But – so rewarding. I wouldn't change her.'

'No,' Patsy agrees.

Trading stories backwards and forwards, the pair of them speak, this afternoon, more openly, more freely than they've ever done: more openly, more freely, perhaps, than they'll ever do again.

Some of the childhood stories that Mrs Busby tells, like the fishing story, Patsy already seems to know in some form; others, like the story about the slide, are clearly new to her. But Patsy is a delighted audience to both kinds of story.

She tells Patsy her stories of Delia's childhood, because these memories are too precious to keep inside, too precious to risk. If something were to happen to her and if Delia never recovers, then they'd be gone; then Delia, the child she was, the woman she grew into, would be gone too. That is something Mrs Busby cannot bear.

She tells Patsy because she needs these memories to live on. She needs them to be with someone who loves Delia, someone who'll cherish them, because even if the Delia of before the accident is gone for ever, this is a way of keeping some of her alive.

She thinks Patsy might be thinking something similar, as the woman who is normally so cagey gives her insight after insight into Delia's London life. It's a life Mrs Busby has dreaded hearing about, dreaded thinking about for so long, but now she wonders why that is. From the stories Patsy tells, it sounds like, above all, the pair of them have just been having a lot of fun.

She recognizes a few of the stories of Delia's London life that Patsy tells, albeit having heard (read, rather, in Delia's letters) rather more tame versions: the story of the kite seems familiar, though not the bit about climbing the tree. More of the stories are new to her, though: stories like the shoe in the pond, or the time when, after getting back late from a trip to the cinema to find the nurses home already under curfew and its front door locked, Patsy and Delia had to shin up a drainpipe. ('Delia's idea?' 'Of course.')

It's getting dark by the time they've wandered round the park and got back to the boating lake.

'Perhaps it's time we should be making a move,' Mrs Busby says, reluctantly. It feels like something special has happened in the park, something that might not persist once they step outside of it, once they pass through the gates back into the streets of the city.

'Goodness, yes,' Patsy says, looking at her watch. 'We should head back to Nonnatus. It's not long until teatime. Or - ' she stops, looking at Mrs Busby as if she's considering something.

'Or?' Mrs Busby asks.

Patsy smiles, to herself as much as anything. 'There's a place we used to go. A lot. The food's well – it's not up to Mrs B's standards' (after a couple of days at Nonnatus House Mrs Busby understands this particular discrimination) 'but it's perfectly fine. It's near the hospital, so we won't be late for visiting. And Delia likes it there. I'd like you to see it.'

'Lead the way,' Mrs Busby says.


	7. Chapter 7

The next evening, Delia's full of the excursion into the hospital grounds that they made that morning. She wants to tell Patsy all about it. But 'Oh,' she seems to realize, as Mrs Busby and Patsy are taking off their coats. 'You'll have already heard all about it from mam.'

Mrs Busby suddenly feels guilty. Of course she's filled Patsy in on it, as they were on their way to the hospital. Things have become tense again between herself and Patsy, so she'd filled the bus journey with chatter to prevent an awkward silence: how they'd had to borrow a coat and boots from Irene, the nurse on duty, because they'd realized too late that Delia had nothing to wear outside; Delia's initial reluctance to go in the wheelchair, followed by her resigned acceptance that after almost a fortnight in bed her legs were not up to carrying her all that way; how Delia had brightened as they pushed open the outside doors and left the confines of the hospital building; the pleasant fifteen minutes they'd had, despite the wintery chill in the air, until it had started raining and they'd had to head inside for cover.

'Sorry love,' she says.

'Never mind,' Patsy says. 'Tell me again. Tell me all about it.'

But what Delia has to say about it surprises both Mrs Busby and Patsy. 'I don't suppose you happen to know if I've been there before?' she asks. 'I've been thinking about it all afternoon. It felt like I knew what would be there, round that corner. Like dejavu, or something.'

'Oh,' Patsy says. 'Yes. You've been there before. We used to meet there for lunch when I worked here. It was somewhere nice and quiet where we could go to chat away from the noise of everyone else.'

'I thought so,' Delia says, nodding. 'I thought it felt familiar. Did we go there often?'

'Quite often.' Patsy seems to half-smile, as if to herself.

It's a spot that's secluded and not overlooked, Mrs Busby remembers, and starts to wonder – but quickly pushes that thought back down beneath the glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, Delia might have remembered something.

'Anyway, thank you for suggesting it to mam. It was nice,' Delia says. 'Except for the rain.'

'Just like home,' Mrs Busby says.

'I suppose I'll have to start getting used to the rain, since I'm going back to Wales soon,' Delia says, a little uncertainly.

Mrs Busby can't help smiling at that; she can't help noticing the black look in Patsy's eyes, either.

Yesterday evening the doctor had spoken to her and had said that as long as nothing untoward happened in the next couple of days, he was sufficiently pleased with Delia's progress that he was willing to release her into Mrs Busby's care.

She's finally going to be able to take her daughter home.

Ever since then, she's been busy making arrangements. Before Delia can come home, Mrs Busby had decided, she needs to get the house ready for her. Her sister's been in, of course, to drop meals off for David, to keep an eye on things, and while it's not that she doesn't trust her to keep everything tidy, she doesn't think she'll get the place (particularly Delia's room) just the way that Mrs Busby wants it. And David's no use, of course.

So she's going to go home on the train tomorrow; after a day of setting the house in order, she and David will then drive back to London to pick Delia and her things up.

She and Patsy had discussed it on their way home yesterday. It had been a difficult conversation, her own bright enthusiasm for the future pitted against Patsy's deepening misery. She'd asked Patsy if she wouldn't mind going to the nurses home to pack up Delia's things.

'But why?' Patsy had said.

'She won't be living there, will she,' Mrs Busby had said. 'She can't stay in London. Not the way she is. You know that.'

After a long silence – most of the bus ride home – Patsy had finally nodded. 'I'll do it,' she had said. 'But there's something else I want to do too. I'm going to ask Sister Julienne to let me have the two days you're away off, so I can visit Delia in the mornings and evenings.'

'Will they let you do that?' Mrs Busby had asked.

'I'll take unpaid leave if I have to,' Patsy had replied grimly.

Her immediate response had been anxiety at leaving the pair of them unchaperoned for two days. But then she had thought: with Delia coming back to Wales, what harm could it do? Surely this thing between them, whatever it is, won't survive the distance as well as Delia's memory loss, and surely Patsy knows that too. These two days, then, had been a concession she'd been big enough to make.

Eventually, then, she had nodded, agreed. The fierce determination in Patsy's eyes had told her that she had no choice in the matter, really.

When she'd reflected on it, part of Mrs Busby had been glad, actually, that Delia wouldn't be left to sit through the whole day on her own with no company. This morning, then, she'd hovered in the corridor while Patsy was in with Sister Julienne trying to secure the arrangement. Patsy had emerged from the office with eyes that were uncharacteristically red-rimmed; she'd nodded quickly in her direction, and then hurriedly disappeared.

Patsy hadn't spoken to her for the rest of the day, after that, until their awkward journey to the hospital this evening.

But since this is their last evening together, Mrs Busby doesn't want it to be a bad one. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a parcel. She's slightly worried that this might be too much for Delia on top of the excitement she's already had today, but this is their last night together as a trio, so it feels like now or never. And it feels like a way to rescue the evening from the dark turn it might take if she doesn't do something to raise Patsy's spirits.

A few evenings ago, on the telephone to David, she'd asked him to send some photographs in the post. He'd always had the camera in his hand when Delia was growing up. She'd thought it was a nuisance at the time, but she's been glad ever since. And now she's realized that it might be helpful to Delia, if she were able to illustrate her tales of home with pictures, to jog her memory by helping her visualize what the places and people in her past looked like. The photograph album had arrived in the post that morning, while she'd been waiting in the corridor for Patsy; since then, she's been keeping it as a surprise from them both.

She unwraps the parcel.

'Oh, photos!' Delia says, and Patsy – whether soothed by Delia's company or simply putting on a brave face, Mrs Busby doesn't know – coos appreciatively too.

She hands the book to Delia, who opens it on her lap, and from their chairs on either side of the bed, Mrs Busby and Patsy lean in for a better view.

'This is you as a baby,' Mrs Busby says. She can see Patsy crane in for a closer look and smile affectionately.

'This is your father and I. Here's the dog. That's the house. Your nain and taid. Your cousins. In Anglesey - you must've been five or six.'

The pair of them ooh and aah at each picture, appreciatively.

'And I think that's your uncle Stephen's dog. Your father's brother,' she adds, when Delia looks at her questioningly. 'Now, that's you and your father. You and me. You and the dog. The dog again.'

Patsy laughs at all the pictures of the dog.

'Why wouldn't we have a picture of the dog,' Mrs Busby protests. 'She's part of the family too.'

'There are more pictures of the dog than there are of Delia,' Patsy teases.

'Hardly,' Mrs Busby huffs, but she doesn't mean it. And for Delia's sake, she's glad Patsy's started to relax again.

They continue to flick through the pages of the book, seeing child-Delia grow into teen-Delia into adult-Delia. Patsy's as interested as Delia, spotting family resemblances and easily picking young Delias out from pictures of assorted groupings of the Busby clan.

'That's when you came home for Christmas, the year before last.' It was the first family Christmas they'd had in years. Delia had always protested she was busy with work. She'd stayed in London last year too – together with Patsy? Mrs Busby wonders. And then she tries to imagine what Christmas will be like this year. Delia will be home, at least. That'll be something.

Delia turns the page.

'This is you, in your nurse's uniform, not long after you qualified.'

Delia inspects it closely. 'This is me?' she says. She looks amazed that the confident, assured young woman in the photo is her.

On the same page there's a group shot, a collection of nurses standing on a broad flight of stairs. Delia finds herself. And then for a moment she's looking between the picture and the woman sat next to her. 'Is that you, Pats?'

The affectionate shortening of Patsy's name is a new thing: it seems to startle Patsy slightly, though she covers it well. Patsy leans in: she looks at it and nods.

Mrs Busby angles the album towards herself for a better look at the pair of them. They're standing next to each other in the shot.

'When was it?' Delia wants to know, angling the book back towards herself.

'Three or four years ago,' Patsy says.

'So long?' Delia asks. 'Have we been friends so long?'

'Yes,' Patsy says, wistful, nostalgic, even.

Friends or more than friends for so long, Mrs Busby thinks, but doesn't say.

On the next page there's another group shot: a group of women on a day out. 'There you are again!' Delia says, picking Patsy out. 'And that's me, isn't it?'

Mrs Busby leans in again. Of course they're standing next to each other. It looks like they might have their arms round each other too, but it's hard to tell, such is the press of other women around them. Mrs Busby's surprised, now, that she didn't guess sooner that this person in the picture was the Patsy who filled Delia's letters. It seems so obvious now, looking at the photos.

'That was last year,' Patsy says.

'Tell me about it, Pats.' Delia says. 'Tell me about being a nurse. What's it like? What was I like?'

Patsy looks to Mrs Busby for her agreement. She nods, encouragingly. She's interested in it herself: she's only the vaguest imaginings of what Delia's life in the hospital is like, odd clues from Delia's letters, things she's read in novels, guesses from what she's seen at Nonnatus, from what she's observed on the ward here. And this, perhaps, is her last chance to find out about it.

Patsy settles back in her chair, an oddly wistful look on her face. 'You were – ' she stops, and starts again. 'You _are_ very good at it.'

* * *

Later, as they're leaving, Delia asks if she can keep the photo album. Mrs Busby agrees: the pictures might help keep her fresh in her daughter's memory while she's away for the next couple of days. Then Delia wants a picture of Patsy to sit alongside those of her mother and father and the dog ' – A proper one, not one where your face is tiny and crowded out by a dozen other people,' Delia says. 'So I can remember your face when you're not here.'

Mrs Busby's not sure whether there's an edge of deception in Delia's voice: does Delia want the picture for the sake of remembering her new (old) friend, or does she want it for the sake of looking at her? She doesn't think she wants to encourage that.

That Patsy feels the way she does about Delia is, evidently, something Mrs Busby can't do anything about. But Delia? As much as Mrs Busby has come to rely on Patsy, to respect her – to like her, even – she still feels that, given Delia's condition, it's better that she thinks that Patsy is only her friend, has only ever been her friend, will only ever be her friend. For her to get sentimental over what Patsy looks like doesn't seem to be a good idea. But how can she prohibit it? If Delia hasn't thought of it as a reason for wanting the photo, she might plant the seed of it by saying something; and if Delia _has_ thought of it, she'll dig her heels in and want it all the more for her mother saying no.

'Perhaps Patsy doesn't have any photos to give you,' is the best she can manage to steer a way out of this situation. But she can see from the look on Patsy's face that tomorrow she'll turn up with a picture for Delia. And by that time Mrs Busby will be in Wales. There'll be nothing she can do about it.

* * *

She gets back to Nonnatus the following morning, after visiting time, without having made a show of herself by breaking down in tears on the bus. It's only two days, she has to remind herself, trying to hold on to the great joy she anticipates in having her daughter home again. But there's that nagging anxiety about leaving her care to Patsy, and worse than that, much worse, the fear that while she's away Delia'll forget all about her again.

With a couple of hours left before her train back to Wales, she goes her room to pack up her things. She'll miss the odd calm of the place, she thinks, its unusual community full of purposeful women.

Her suitcase is almost full when she turns to the small parcel of Delia's things that she'd been given at the hospital soon after they'd first arrived. She'd put the parcel to one side then, but now, the better to fit into her case, she opens it up.

And that's when she finds the ring.

She sees the chain first, a pretty, delicate one, wrapped awkwardly around a tangle of oddments. Carefully she untangles it, holds it up to see what's attached to it. And then she sees it.

There's no doubting what it is. It's unmistakable.

She's shocked. She hadn't thought of them doing anything like this.

She sits on the bed to think. Does Patsy have one too? Is that how it works? Or is it just Delia? And if it is just Delia, what does that mean?

It makes her reconsider going home, reconsider leaving them unsupervised: what if Patsy's been waiting for this moment, when she gets Delia alone to - to do what?

And what if Delia starts to remember?

But she has to go back to Wales. She has to sort out the house, to sort out Delia's room: she trusts neither her sister nor David to do it properly. And she has to go back because she has to accompany David on the long drive back to London, so they can take Delia home. It's too far on roads that are too unfamiliar to expect him to do it alone.

She sighs. A ring! The audacity of it. Was it Delia's idea? Or Patsy's? She can't imagine how it must have been. She can't imagine what they must have been thinking.

But it's something, at least, she supposes. Commitment. Perhaps it explains a lot about Patsy, about the last few weeks.

She thinks back to those heady days when she and David were engaged. If something like this, like Delia's accident, had happened to her then, what would David have done? Would he have stuck around like Patsy has? It's different, she thinks. He's a man, singularly unprepared for coping in these situations. And would she have wanted him to, anyway? Wouldn't she have wanted him to move on, to start afresh?

But were the situation reversed – had David been injured, back then when they were so young and she was so in love – she knows what she would have done. She wouldn't have given him up, or given up on him. She wouldn't have left him. She couldn't have done.

She sits on the bed and she thinks.


	8. Chapter 8

She leaves David trying to fit Delia's belongings into the car: two cardboard boxes, a large case and two smaller ones, and a couple of canvas bags, which, as agreed, Patsy has packed up and left with the porter of the nurses home for them to collect. It's not much, really, for five years away from home, but it's a good job there's not more since the car's not a big one.

She's told David that it'll be quicker, more efficient, if she goes up to get Delia while he sees to the car. That's not untrue, but it's not her real reason for wanting to go up to the ward alone.

She wants to go up alone just in case – of what? In case of many things, things she doesn't want David to know or see. But mainly in case her daughter has forgotten her again: she could not bear that, and, perhaps more than that, she could not bear for him to see that again.

She knows it's largely irrational, this fear: she's spoken on the phone to Patsy at Nonnatus both evenings she's been away, and Patsy had told her that Delia was doing fine, but she won't entirely believe it until she sees her for herself. It had sounded, from what she'd said, that Patsy had been at the hospital all day yesterday, cashing in favours with nurses she's friendly with to spend as much time as she could with Delia. She'd taken her to the staff canteen for lunch, apparently. 'Hardly glamorous, but a change from the ward at least,' Patsy had said, 'And Delia seemed to recognize it. She must have eaten hundreds of meals there. Thousands, maybe. So the place must have stuck with her, somehow. And she hasn't lost her liking for canteen jam roly poly and custard.'

It sounds like they've been having a grand old time, the pair of them. It'll be hard for Delia to go back to being on her own, with just her mother and father for company, Mrs Busby realizes.

When she reaches the corridor where Delia's ward is, she pauses for a moment, trying to prepare herself for whatever might lie behind the door.

It swings open. 'Oh, good afternoon Mrs Busby,' Nurse Irene says, passing by on her way to somewhere. 'Come to take Delia home?'

She smiles at her, and nods. Now or never, she thinks, and with anxiety in her heart, she pushes open the door of the ward.

'Hello, mam,' Delia says, looking up from her hand of cards. There's no questioning inflection at all. She remembers! It's a relief.

'Hello love,' she replies, coming over to kiss her. Delia's out of bed, and dressed properly (the first time she's seen her so since the accident) in a smart blue frock that brings out the colour in her eyes. Her hair's shiny and neat: she almost looks like the old Delia.

'Patsy,' she says, nodding at the other woman.

'Mrs Busby', Patsy says, smiling generously, but there's a sadness in her eyes. Her time with Delia's almost up.

'I've come to take you home, love.' Mrs Busby says. 'Are you ready?'

Delia smiles at her, pleads with her eyes. 'Let us just finish this game, mam.'

Mrs Busby agrees, lets them stretch out their time just a little bit longer.

While the girls finish their game Mrs Busby potters, fussing round the bags into which Delia's few possessions are neatly packed. Who packed them, her daughter or Patsy? She can't tell.

There's a pile of scrap paper on the bedside table. They've been playing hangman again. Idly, she picks up the paper, shuffles through the pages, looking at one, then the next, then a third. She looks at Patsy, horrified. She's only been gone for a day or so, and this is what she does?

Patsy looks up from the game to see Mrs Busby staring at her, the papers in her hand.

'She started it, not me,' Patsy says. She smiles a little. 'She remembers it.'

Mrs Busby looks at the pages again, at the complex, polysyllabic words that she can't pronounce, let alone understand. LAPAROTOMY. HAEMOSTAT. LINEA ALBA. TROCAR.

'I don't remember remember,' Delia says. 'At least I don't think I do. But I know what the words mean. And how they're spelt. I can spell some of them better than Patsy, in fact.' Delia grins at Patsy.

'Alright, alright,' Patsy says. 'Two ts instead of one is an easy mistake to make. And I thought we'd agreed to forget about that?'

'I don't think we did agree that, Pats,' Delia teases.

When Delia looks back down at her cards to select the next one to play, Patsy – taking care that Delia won't see it - shoots her a look of such undisguised adoration that it almost makes Mrs Busby blush.

With mixed emotions Mrs Busby goes back to pottering while they finish the game. Eventually there's a laugh of triumph and a muted, comic roar of anguish: Delia's won.

'You've never let her win, Patsy?' Mrs Busby says.

'Let her win? Chance'd be a fine thing. You know, I think she cheats. I'm almost sure she does.'

'I do not. Don't be such a sore loser, Pats.'

Delia's grinning in victory and Patsy's faux-annoyance is not hiding her pleasure in this instance of Delia being undeniably Delia.

Mrs Busby feels guilty at being the one who's going to have to break up the party. But David wants to set off back while the light's still good, which means she must.

'Come on now,' she says gently. 'Your father's waiting.'

'I feel almost sad to be leaving this room,' Delia says when she's got her coat on and buttoned up. Patsy and Mrs Busby are gathering up her belongings, taking a bag each. 'It's almost all I've ever known.'

'Shall we go?' Mrs Busby says, when she's made sure they've got everything. She leads the way.

'There's a whole world out there, you know,' Patsy says to Delia as they follow her.

'I know,' Delia says, and Mrs Busby can hear the warmth in her voice. 'And I want to see it. But I think I might miss this place. Just a bit.'

Is it her time here as an invalid Delia'll miss, Mrs Busby wonders, as she reaches the door that leads to the stairwell, or the time she can't remember, when she worked here?

She turns to check they're still following her. They're a few metres behind her, and she's almost out of earshot, since Delia's suddenly dropped her voice. She hears what Delia says, all the same.

'And I'll miss you,' Delia says to Patsy. 'I think I might miss you a lot. I think I know I will.'

Delia has stopped, and is smiling shyly at Patsy. It's a kind of look Mrs Busby hasn't seen in her daughter before. Mrs Busby turns away. It doesn't feel right to be eavesdropping on them right now. She pushes open the door and heads down the stairs. But not before she's seen Patsy smile back, as shyly as Delia has, and reach out to clasp hold of Delia's hand.

The girls make it downstairs, out to where the car is, just a minute or two after she does.

Then there's an uncomfortable couple of moments while David and Delia stand awkwardly looking at each other, both of them uncertain. Delia, of course, hasn't seen her father since her recall started to improve, so he is a stranger to her. And David, for his part, last saw his daughter as a fragile, broken thing in a bed, not as this nearly-normal young woman who looks so much like the Delia of old.

Delia steps forward first. If she can't remember her father, she has at least seen pictures.

'Dad?' Delia hazards.

David's smile starts small: perhaps he hasn't been able to believe it either, until he's seen her. His smile widens as he bundles his daughter into a hug.

'David, you're messing up her hair,' Mrs Busby fusses, but saying that is really only a way of trying to distract herself from a heart that feels like it's going to burst. They've got their daughter back again. She will get better, she thinks. She _must._

Having finally let his daughter go, David's now shaking hands with Patsy, thanking her for being such a good friend to Delia and her mother. He takes Delia's bag from Patsy, and then he turns to Delia. 'Now lovey,' he says. 'Time to get back to Wales?'

Delia smiles and nods, but Mrs Busby can see a sadness in her eyes. She makes a decision. After all Patsy's done it only seems fair to give them a little time on their own to say good bye. She turns briskly to her husband. 'Now dear,' she says. 'Let's get these last couple of bags in the car, and then why don't we go over that map one more time.'

As she's distracting her husband with the road atlas she sees Delia hold out her arms for a hug.

Patsy glances at Mrs Busby: it's a look that's partly gratitude, partly a challenge that defies her to interfere. Mrs Busby nods her head, slightly, accepting what the look conveys.

Patsy moves in towards Delia and holds her tight. The pair of them seem to cling to each other.

'You'll write, won't you Pats,' she hears Delia say, after a few moments of them standing like that.

Patsy's eyes are bright, gleaming with tears. She nods. 'Of course,' she says.

'Don't cry Pats,' Delia says, her voice muffled in Patsy's shoulder.

'I'm not,' Patsy sniffs.

'Liar,' Delia says, drawing back from her slightly and looking at her intently, as if to study her face and store it in her memory. 'But write to me.'

Patsy pulls her close again and kisses her on her forehead. Then she lets her go. Delia makes a grab for Patsy's hand, squeezes it, and then turns to get into the car door that her father's now holding open for her.

Mrs Busby moves to Patsy now. Patsy's struggling to keep on a brave face, but she's just about managing it. Mrs Busby gives her a hug. They've been through a lot, this past couple of weeks, and she wants to convey her gratitude. She couldn't have done it without her, she knows.

'You will write to her, won't you,' she finds herself saying.

'Of course,' Patsy replies, nodding vigorously into her shoulder.

They break the embrace and step back from each other. 'And perhaps you could come and visit.' Mrs Busby deliberately hasn't mentioned Patsy visiting (and Patsy too has avoided the subject, perhaps for fear of what Mrs Busby might say) since that very first day they met. But now, all of a sudden, it seems like the right thing to say.

'Really?' Patsy says, her voice uncertain but her eyes growing wide with the idea.

'Delia would like it,' Mrs Busby says, and admits, 'I would too.' Then she says something she really wasn't expecting to. 'Why don't you - why don't you come for Christmas?'

THE END

 **a/n: jeez, well this fic's ended up about three times longer than it was meant to. Oops! Thanks for reading and reviewing - I've had a real blast writing this, even though it was a completely absurd idea to try to write the whole thing in just over a week. But this is the end – unless – unless - um, do you guys want to see Christmas? ;)**


	9. Epilogue (Part 1)

**a/n: This was going to be a nice _little_ epilogue to round this fic off but it's got a bit long. Yeah, sorry. I'm just having too much fun playing with the Busbys. So, because I'm ridiculous, have an epilogue in multiple parts (which hopefully will not be longer than the original fic was).**

* * *

 **EPILOGUE (Part 1)**

Mrs Busby hadn't regretted the invitation immediately, though by the time they were passing Swindon and David had decided there was no way they'd make it back to Wales that evening she was certainly starting to have doubts. Delia was dozing by then, her initial eagerness to view whatever lay beyond the car window having diminished as night had encroached and the dull grey landscape outside had become an impenetrable darkness punctuated at irregular intervals by the lights of cars as they sped by.

With the issue pressing on her (and having glanced over her shoulder to see that Delia was still asleep) she'd mentioned it to David, wondering if he might object, if he might insist on having a quiet family Christmas, just the three of them. But after thinking for a moment, he'd simply said 'That'll be nice,' and asked her to check the road atlas to find them a B and B on this side of Bristol. And for the next half an hour, any further discussion of the subject had been lost in her attempts to read the map in brief flashes of light from streetlamps as she sought to guide them towards somewhere half decent.

It's only the following morning as she and Delia are leaning on the railings of the pier and looking out over the Bristol Channel that those doubts shape themselves into something more like regret. She'd woken up entertaining the possibility that, one way or another, Delia might have forgotten about Patsy by Christmas, rendering the invitation she'd so hastily extended unnecessary. But on the pier, with the wind whipping off the water towards them, Delia hugs her coat around herself and begins to talk about Patsy coming for Christmas, and Mrs Busby realizes that, firstly, there's little chance of Delia forgetting about Patsy, and secondly, it's now much too late to take back the invitation.

When she'd mentioned it to David in the car the night before she'd been sure that Delia was dozing. Apparently, though, Delia had not been asleep, and had heard every word. And now Delia is talking about her friend coming to visit with such excitement, such belief in it coming to pass, that Mrs Busby discovers she does not have the heart to go back on the plan.

Delia's excited chatter is brought to a halt as David calls them back over to the car so they can drive on board the rickety old ferry that'll take them across the water to Wales. For the next half hour he and Delia are preoccupied with peering over the side of the boat and looking for seals and porpoises ('I don't think they come so far up,' Mrs Busby says but neither her husband nor her daughter take any notice), but while they are distracted, the subject of Christmas continues to play on Mrs Busby's mind. She'd have felt awkward about rescinding the invitation to Patsy with David knowing she'd asked her but she still would have found a way to do it. But she can't do that now, not with Delia knowing about it: she doesn't have it in her, it seems, to try to break her daughter's heart.

She wishes she hadn't asked Patsy, then, but now she has she resolves to make the best of it.

* * *

Over the next few days, she distracts herself by focusing her energies on settling Delia back into her life at home. She can't forget about the invitation, though, because it's a subject that Delia is keen to return to on the tiniest of pretexts. Mrs Busby tries to convince herself that Delia wants to talk about Patsy again and again because there's little else that she _can_ actually talk about, little else that she remembers, but instinct tells her that there's more to it than that.

The problem that's bothering her most is one large-looming logistical issue: night-time arrangements. Theirs is a tiny little cottage, really. Snug and cosy. She and David have lived there their entire married life, and it's just big enough for the three of them. With the indoor bathroom they had put in when Delia was a toddler, there are just two bedrooms upstairs: hers and David's, and Delia's. So where is Patsy going to sleep? She thinks about putting her in the sitting room, but David won't stand for that. Even when he's off work, he's up at five thirty in the morning, and he won't want to be tripping over someone on a camp bed on his way to make his tea. For a while she wonders if there might be room for Patsy at her sister's instead. Their farmhouse is much bigger than the cottage. But it's a good twenty minutes' walk away if it snows, and it hardly seems to be hospitable, to invite someone round and then pack them off up the road. And how to explain it – to David, to Delia, to Patsy? And besides, her sister wouldn't thank her for imposing an unexpected houseguest on her.

She mentions the problem to David over breakfast one Sunday. 'I'll have to put Patsy on the camp bed in Delia's room,' she says.

David nods, as if it's what he expected her to say. Of course, he can't see what the problem with that is because she won't tell him what the problem with it is. 'It'll be a snug fit,' is what he says instead, 'But I'll see about moving that chest of drawers out into the shed and then there should be plenty of room.'

She equivocates a little.

David doesn't understand her fussing. 'They'll be more than fine in there,' he says. 'That Patsy speaks posh, but she won't be expecting more, surely. She knows it's not a hotel she's coming to. It's clean and warm and homely - don't worry about it, woman!'

And that's that.

* * *

Things have been coming back to Delia. Odd things seem to prompt her recollection: sights, sounds, smells even. She seems to be piecing her past together, fragment by fragment. Early in December (earlier than they would normally do it, but they are housebound on a squally Wednesday afternoon when it is bucketing down with rain, and Delia is so fidgety and restless that Mrs Busby is desperate to find an occupation to distract her) they put up the tree, and it seems to spark one such chain of connected memories.

It starts with one of the Christmas ornaments: a scruffy looking thing, partly made out of straw, partly made out of red cloth, and so oddly misshapen that what it's meant to resemble – an angel? a Christmas scarecrow? something else entirely? - is a bit of a mystery. It's an ugly old thing, and every year as the tree is taken down, Mrs Busby is tempted to throw it out. But Delia has always loved that decoration, so she's kept it for her, even though the Christmases that Delia has been home have been few and far between in recent years.

Now as she comes into the sitting room carrying another box of decorations for them to sort through, she's glad she's kept it. Delia's sitting on the settee, holding the decoration and looking at it thoughtfully.

'That old thing,' Mrs Busby says, wrinkling her nose.

'I like it,' Delia replies. She holds it to her face, sniffs at it. 'It smells of Christmas.'

'They smell of the shed,' Mrs Busby says.

Delia sniffs it again. 'No,' she says. 'It smells of Christmas.'

She holds it up to Mrs Busby to sniff. Reluctantly she does so. And she can see what Delia means: the smell of the decoration, musty and dusty with a hint of pine _is_ what Christmas smells like. Or at least, it's what this part of Christmas smells like, the tree-putting-up part. It's something they've not done together for years, Mrs Busby thinks: Delia was sixteen or seventeen the last time she was home to do this. If Delia's really remembering the smell, she's remembering it from her childhood.

Delia puts down the decoration carefully and goes fishing in the box that Mrs Busby has just brought in to see what else she can find. She pulls out a shiny red boot, trimmed with white fur, two or three inches big. She sniffs that too. 'Siôn Corn,' she says, now rooting round in the box for the other boot to make the pair. She won't find it, Mrs Busby knows.

After a minute or two, Delia seems to know it too. 'We don't have the other one, do we?' she says, with a look of deep concentration on her face.

'No,' Mrs Busby says, perching on the edge of the rocking chair and watching Delia intently.

Delia picks up the shiny boot they do have and looks at it closely.

'It fell in the fire, didn't it?'

'It did,' Mrs Busby confirms, and then qualifies the answer. 'Well, _fell_ might not be the right word.'

'I threw it,' Delia says. 'I threw it at my cousin Bryan and I missed him and it went in the fire.'

'You could have had his eye out with it,' Mrs Busby says.

Delia looks at the little thing in her hand, weighs it carefully. 'I don't think I could've. I don't think I could've thrown it hard enough to take out an eye, not at that age. It would just have bruised him, if it had hit him.'

Is it the naughty child answering back, or the nurse offering a professional opinion? Mrs Busby wonders. Most likely, it's a bit of both. 'Still, Delia,' she says, trying to frown at her daughter. 'It wasn't a nice thing to do.'

'He wouldn't let me play with the train set,' Delia says, then corrects herself. 'He wouldn't let me play with _my_ train set. He deserved it.'

'Delia!' Mrs Busby says, affecting outrage, but she finds it's hard to keep her face and her tone solemn and disapproving when Delia's remembering things that had seemed to be buried and gone. Bryan probably did deserve it, anyway, she thinks. He always was a difficult child, never one for sharing toys, even toys that weren't his in the first place. Delia's remembered that right.

* * *

A few days after the tree goes up, it seems to Mrs Busby that Delia's mentioning Patsy less and less. It's not that she's forgotten about her, though. At the same time that she's gone quiet, she's also writing Patsy letters, page after page. Two letters have already gone off to London, and two have come back in reply.

Delia still doesn't remember her London life together with Patsy, of that Mrs Busby is fairly sure; rather, she's reacting to (what must seem to her to be) newly emerging feelings. But even if Delia can't recall how she once felt about Patsy, it seems like she's remembered that the feelings she is now having towards Patsy are something that she must conceal. She is increasingly guarded whenever the subject of Patsy – or that of the approach of Christmas – is mentioned, as if she's trying not to betray herself.

Mrs Busby can't help feeling that Delia's sudden change in attitude is a remembered behaviour, a remembered deception. It's a kind of secretiveness that Mrs Busby herself recalls from a difficult point in Delia's teenage years.

Mrs Busby hates it. She feels the awkwardness, the distance of the last ten years starting to grow between them again, and she hates it.

What she also hates is a look that Delia's getting more and more: a kind of claustrophobic look that also recalls those same, difficult teenage years.

When she's out, with the dog and her father, or even when she's at home and she can bury herself in books (sometimes novels, more often medical textbooks that they brought back with her from London) Delia seems fine.

But when she's in company, when she's out in the village meeting neighbours, or with her extended family, with her aunt and her uncle, her cousins and their children, Mrs Busby can't shake the sense that Delia's trying to bite down her boredom. Even with the little she knows about the rest of the world (albeit that little is growing more and more every day), Delia is restless in this village with its narrow horizons. Every day, it feels like Delia is hiding herself more and more; conforming outwardly, but, her mother can tell, from her face, from her eyes, she is (or she wants to be) elsewhere.

If things stay as they are, it won't be long before Delia snaps, Mrs Busby suspects. The village simply isn't big enough for her. It never has been. And what she also suspects is that it's only the letters from London and the prospect of Patsy coming to visit that is keeping Delia on an even keel. It offers her an escape route of sorts, this connection with someone who is more on Delia's wavelength than her cousins who've hardly ever left the village.

Despite her early regrets about having invited Patsy, as December wears on Mrs Busby finds herself hoping more and more that Delia won't end updisappointed when Christmas does come around. As she's posting Delia's third letter to London, then, Mrs Busby sends one of her own. It's brief and to the point, containing instructions about which train to get, where to change, where to get off and the like. After signing her name, she adds a postscript telling Patsy to write so they know when they should expect her, and to let her know as soon as possible if she can't make it, so she can break the news to Delia.

Picking up the pieces if Patsy can't come is something that Mrs Busby doesn't look forward to.

Patsy, of course, writes by return of post: barring delays, she'll be at the village station halt by four thirty on Christmas Eve.

* * *

The day before Christmas Eve, Mrs Busby is standing at the sink doing the washing up when there's a commotion at the front door: David, Delia and the dog are back from their walk. Footsteps approach her, and then an arm is wrapped around her from behind, something is dangled over her head, and a cold face is next to hers, kissing her cheek.

'David!' she says.

'Couldn't help it,' he grins at her. 'Look what we found!' In his hand is a bunch of bright green leaves, interspersed with white berries.

She tuts at him. He really is a silly old fool sometimes.

'Delia found it,' he says. 'Climbed a tree for it, she did.'

'Dad, you weren't meant to say that!' Delia comes into the kitchen, taking off her gloves as she does. She bats her father with them in a show of pretend-annoyance.

Mrs Busby glares at her husband. 'David, you were meant to be keeping an eye on her.' He's always been proud of his daughter's agility, and no doubt he egged her on. Then she turns the glare on her daughter: 'Delia, what've I said about climbing trees?'

Delia shrugs at her, as if she's somehow helpless in the face of a tree that needs to be climbed. 'Dad thought it'd look pretty in the wreath.' She waves the mistletoe in the direction of her mother, and dances near her to kiss her cheek.

Mrs Busby shakes her head at her, and crossly turns back to the washing up. She's annoyed about the tree, of course, but she's also irritated about why else Delia might have been so determined to get the mistletoe. Because it's not that she doesn't trust Patsy not to push things in that department. No, it's her daughter that she doesn't trust not to try something rash, who she doesn't trust not to act on whatever pull of attraction seems to draw her to the other woman.

'We got holly and berries too,' Delia says, showing her these too. 'We'll have the best looking wreaths in all of south Wales.'

'No, Delia,' David looks up from where he's been filling the dog's water bowl. 'All of Wales.'

Mrs Busby harrumphs.

'The best wreaths in all of Wales, Mam,' Delia says, as they retreat into the sitting room with their assorted greenery.

'Put some newspaper down before you start!' Mrs Busby calls after them.

Half an hour later, when she's calmed down a little, she takes a pot of tea into them, and inspects their handiwork. 'The mess in here!' she says. The pair of them are kneeling round a low table, there are offcuts of wire, and leaves, and berries everywhere, and the dog's retreated under a chair where it's safer. But what they've done is really quite pretty. David's always had a knack for this sort of thing.

'Best in all of Wales?' Delia looks up at her.

'I suppose so,' Mrs Busby concedes.

* * *

Later, Mrs Busby decides it's probably better if she chooses not to notice that Delia seems to have pocketed a sprig of mistletoe; more than that, she decides that for her own peace of mind, over the next couple of days she might have to get into the habit of choosing carefully what she does and doesn't see.


	10. Epilogue (Part 2)

It's a ten minute walk down to the station halt at most, but since quarter to four Delia's had her shoes on and has been stood at the window, alternating her gaze between the flakes of snow drifting down and her father. That morning, Delia had mentioned wanting to go to meet Patsy on her own, but – much stronger though she is – Mrs Busby doesn't want her wandering around on her own after dark, so has insisted that David (and, inevitably then, the dog too) walk down with her. Mrs Busby's glad she put her foot down on this: if she hadn't, Delia would be out there on her own on the cold exposed platform now.

Finally, at ten past four David relents and agrees that they can set off. Mrs Busby waves them off, then with the pair of them out of the way, has a quick tidy up, anxious about what their visitor will make of their little, provincial home and keen to make a good impression.

At quarter to five Mrs Busby pops into the kitchen to put the kettle on; just in time too, for a few moments later, there's a clatter of noise at the front door, and David and Delia (and the dog) are back with their guest.

Once hats and coats are off, and Patsy's suitcase is deposited at the bottom of the stairs, they sit down to tea. Patsy seems a bit stiff, a bit formal – a bit nervous, even - to start with, but as she warms up (in more ways than one) over the tea she regales them with tales of Nonnatus in the days since Mrs Busby and Delia left London. Patsy seems to have had an eventful time: she recounts how she'd taken the cubs (with Father Christmas – 'not the real one,') to see the lights on Oxford Street and how one of them had been violently sick after eating too many of the sweets that Tom the vicar had handed out; how the Christmas play had had to be cancelled because of a measles outbreak; and most alarmingly, how Sister Monica Joan had gone missing for days, and had only just been tracked down somewhere in the middle of Berkshire by Sister Evangelina.

Delia listens with wide-eyed wonder, but Mrs Busby supposes that the expression on her own face isn't too far different. So much seems to have happened in London in just a few weeks that she's exhausted just thinking of it.

Patsy also tells them how, that very afternoon, all her colleagues at Nonnatus are performing in their makeshift choir for the BBC.

'The BBC!' David is impressed. 'You could've been on the television and instead you've come all the way out here to snowy Wales. Imagine, us knowing someone on the television! We could've been watching you on Christmas day.'

Delia, though, is less impressed with the idea. 'We don't have a television.' She looks sourly at her father: Mrs Busby guesses that the thought that Patsy might have stayed away in order to be filmed by the BBC is one that doesn't sit well with her.

Patsy waves a hand. 'I can't really sing. And, besides, I'd already made plans.' Her gaze falls on Delia for a moment, then shyly, slips away to land somewhere on the carpet.

'Still, it's a shame,' David continues. 'A once in a life time opportunity.'

But if Mrs Busby judges right, he's the only one in the room who's entertaining anything like regret that Patsy's not singing with the rest of the Nonnatus choir that afternoon hundreds of miles away in London.

'Come on Pats,' Delia says then, clambering to her feet. 'Let's get your bags upstairs. I'll show you my room.'

* * *

'Delia,' Mrs Busby calls up the stairs. 'Delia! We'll be late if you don't get a move on!'

For the last half an hour there's been a murmur of chatter and laughter floating down the stairs, and Mrs Busby has resolved to leave them to it as long as she can. But they have to be at the village hall by six thirty, and they'll miss the start of the carol service if they don't set off now.

'Sorry Mam,' Delia calls down the stairs, as she and Patsy emerge from her room.

'Is that the only coat you've got, Patsy love?' Mrs Busby tuts fretfully at what Patsy's wearing as she comes down the stairs: her coat might be suitable for the weather in London but it looks a bit thin for the Welsh night air. 'Hang on a minute, I'll lend you one of mine.'

Delia protests. 'She can't wear one of your coats, Mam!'

'What's wrong with my coats?'

'It'd look – well – Patsy's taller than you are, for a start.'

'It's very generous of you, Mrs Busby,' Patsy attempts to be the peace maker, but Delia's having none of it. After a couple of minutes' standoff, they compromise by forcing Patsy into an extra jumper and a woolly hat.

As Mrs Busby's locking the front door, Delia and Patsy are already at the end of the path and away down the lane. As soon as she could, Delia has linked arms with Patsy, ostensibly to guide her on her way, but clearly with another intention in mind.

It's one of those things that Mrs Busby thinks she'll choose not to notice. In the dark and with the snow coming down as it is, it's hard to see that far ahead anyway.

* * *

Later, after they've made it back home from the carol service in the village hall, and are sat round the fire roasting chestnuts, the Busbys reminisce about Christmases past, and Delia shows off to Patsy some of the things she can remember.

'What about you, Patsy?' Mrs Busby asks in a lull in their remembering, not wanting her to feel left out. 'What do your family usually do at Christmas?'

Suddenly pensive, Patsy stares into the fire. 'It's a long time since I've had a family Christmas,' she says quietly. After a moment she looks up, attempting brightness. 'I lived in Singapore as a child – I didn't see snow until I was fourteen.'

'Are your parents in England now?'

Patsy shakes her head. 'My father is,' she says, staring into the fire again. There's something there, some secret, some sorrow, that Mrs Busby has inadvertently stumbled into, and she kicks herself for having done so, and wonders how to make amends.

But Delia seems to know what to do. She reaches out to Patsy, covers her hands with her own and tries to catch Patsy's eye. After a couple of minutes, Patsy looks up at Delia, and smiles.

* * *

The next morning, Mrs Busby's up early to get the turkey in the oven. She's just making pastry for mince pies when Delia and Patsy, both of them still in their pyjamas, stumble into the kitchen. Delia fusses with the kettle.

'Do we not have any coffee, mam?' she asks, rummaging in the cupboard.

The question startles Mrs Busby slightly. Delia hasn't asked for coffee before, and it's not something they usually have in the house, since neither she nor David usually drink it. It must be something else she's remembered: exotic London tastes, no doubt.

'Sorry love,' she says. 'You'll have to make do with tea.'

'Wait here,' Patsy says, and disappears upstairs. She returns a minute or so later with a neatly gift-wrapped parcel.

'Presents aren't till after Christmas dinner, Pats,' Delia says. 'It's tradition.'

That's another thing Delia seems to have remembered. But remembering doesn't seem to have made her any more patient than she's ever been. 'What time's dinner, Mam?' she grins.

'Open this one now,' Patsy says, holding it out to her.

Delia takes it from her, and as she's always done, tries to guess what it is before she opens the paper. She weighs it, rattles it, squashes the paper down to reveal its outline. Then she sniffs it. 'Pats!' she says, delighted. 'How did you know?' She rips open the paper to reveal a packet of coffee.

Patsy shrugs, smiling a little bashfully. 'Lucky guess, I suppose.'

* * *

A couple of hours later, after Delia and Patsy have drunk their coffee, eaten a spot of breakfast and got dressed, they're in the kitchen with Mrs Busby making their way with more enthusiasm than efficiency through the vegetables that need peeling. Mrs Busby thinks she'd probably get the job done quicker – and with less waste – without them there, but it's nice to have company, to have the pair of them in there with her, chattering, teasing each other, and singing along to the radio.

'Mrs Lloyd's sow'll be getting a good meal the way you two are going at those veg,' Mrs Busby says, looking across the kitchen. The waste pile is a mountain of thick vegetable peelings.

'What goes around comes around,' Delia grins, gesturing towards the sausages and bacon that Mrs Busby is assembling into pigs in blankets.

'I hope you're a bit more gentle with your patients than you are with those parsnips! I'm surprised there's any of them left.'

'Any patients or any parsnips?' Delia waves the offending (offended?) root vegetable at her mother.

'Both!'

'I'm happy to admit I'm not one for kitchen duties,' Patsy cheerfully admits. 'I can't cook. I've never had to, really.'

'Nor can Delia,' Mrs Busby teases. 'She can burn water.'

'Mother!' Delia is outraged.

'What on earth were you going to do about cooking once you got into the flat?' Mrs Busby asks Patsy.

'I don't think we'd really thought about that,' Patsy grins. 'Live off biscuits, perhaps. Or starve.'

Mrs Busby laughs.

'What flat?' Delia asks. Mrs Busby and Patsy stop laughing, suddenly. Somehow, in their high spirits, they've forgotten that neither of them have spoken – not explicitly, anyway – about the flat in front of Delia.

Mrs Busby looks at her daughter, and feels a peculiar prickling on her skin. Delia's got that look that's been coming more frequently these days, like she already half-knows the answer, like she's caught hold of the outline of a memory and she's lifting it up to the light to see its details.

'Pats, what flat?' Delia asks again, in a quiet, urgent voice.

Patsy turns to her, gently. 'Before the accident,' she explains, 'you and I were going to move into a flat together.'

'I thought –' Delia says and stops. She thinks for a moment. Then, 'We hadn't moved in,' she says, with conviction.

'No, we hadn't,' Patsy says.

'We had no furniture.'

'No, we didn't,' Patsy agrees.

'But we'd got the key, and we went there to have a picnic and we – ' Delia stops and seems to catch her breath, her eyes opening wide. A half-smile starts to play about her lips. She looks up at Patsy with a look of wonderment.

'Mm,' Patsy says, with her own answering half-grin. She's flushing a little – no doubt, Mrs Busby thinks, made awkward and embarrassed by Delia remembering their plans to live together in front of her.

'And after, I was late for work,' Delia says.

'And then you borrowed my bike,' Patsy replies.

'Oh,' Delia says. 'And that was when – ' she points to her head.

'Yes. That was when,' Patsy confirms.

Delia exhales, blinks. Swears. 'Bloody hell.'

'Delia. Language!' Mrs Busby says automatically.

Delia's rubbing her forehead: she has a look that suggests certain things are falling into place. A mix of emotions seem to flit across her face. She's staring at Patsy with a curious kind of intensity.

Mrs Busby turns away: she wraps up the newspaper of veg peelings and takes them into the scullery to the slops bucket.

When she returns, Delia says, 'Mam, do you need us to do any more?'

Mrs Busby surveys the kitchen. There are piles of veg in tins ready to go into the oven to be roasted; there's a small mountain of sprouts peeled and ready to be popped in a pan ('Do I like sprouts?' Delia had asked the day before. 'Yes,' Mrs Busby had replied, not entirely telling the truth. 'Mam, are you sure?'); the pigs wrapped in blankets are snug in their tray. She just needs to wait for the turkey to come out of the oven so the veg can take its place, and then there'll be the gravy and a few last things.

'No,' Mrs Busby says. 'I think we're about done.' There's the table to set, but David always does that (it's tradition: Christmas is the one time a year he does the table, and the one time a year he does the washing up too).

'Do you mind if we – I think Patsy and I need to talk,' Delia says, in a voice that's suddenly very serious.

Patsy nods, looking a little terrified, if Mrs Busby can read the expression in her eyes.

'Shall we –' Delia points outside.

'A breath of fresh air'll do you good before your dinner,' Mrs Busby says, as if to convince them all that all they're doing is going for an invigorating preprandial stroll, rather than – well – rather than whatever they're going out to talk about.

In a curious silence, the girls put on their hats and coats and head outside.

David comes in (the dog at his heels) just as the back door has closed behind them. 'Where are they off to?' He asks.

'They've just popped out for a bit of air before dinner,' she says.

'And they haven't taken the dog?' he bends over and fusses over the dog. 'Poor old dear,' he says.

'Will you set the table, love?' Mrs Busby says, watching out of the kitchen window as Delia and Patsy head out into the lane beyond the house.

* * *

And that's when she realizes she's going to have to break one of the promises she's made to herself. She'd decided, the day before, that she won't go into Delia's room while Patsy's here: she refuses to risk knowing if people aren't sleeping in the beds that they ought to be sleeping in. But the Christmas table cloth is in the cupboard in Delia's room. She'd been meaning to ask Delia to get it, but now she's gone out she can't; and it'll be too late by the time she comes back from wherever she's gone with Patsy.

There's nothing for it. She'll have to go in.

After hovering on the landing for a moment, she pushes open the door. She sighs at what she sees. She might have known it: both beds are made up immaculately, giving no clue to who slept or didn't sleep where. One of the consequences of them both being nurses, no doubt; between them, they've probably made up thousands upon thousands of beds in their time.

She doesn't linger too long in there, anyway. She gets the table cloth out of the cupboard and goes back down stairs to check on the turkey.

* * *

An hour or so later the girls are back, the brisk winter air having put a glow in their cheeks and a shining brightness in their eyes.

* * *

After dinner they retire to the sitting room (still wearing their paper hats) and it's finally time for presents.

(What to get Patsy had posed Mrs Busby something of a problem; a couple of weeks earlier she and Delia had headed into the local town one afternoon to go shopping. In the fourth shop they'd been in, Delia had chosen something for Patsy – a bold chunky bracelet, polished so it reflected the light.

'Are you sure?' Mrs Busby had said. 'It's a bit – modern,'

'She'll like it,' Delia had replied with absolute certainty.

Mrs Busby, meanwhile, had ummed and aahed, having nothing like the same clarity her daughter had. Finally, in the haberdashers to pick up some buttons for David's shirts, she had thrown her hands up in despair.

'A scarf,' she had said, decisively. 'You can't go wrong with a scarf.'

Delia had supervised the choice of wool: 'Something green, I think. That'll look nice with her colouring.')

Patsy's delighted with the presents, it turns out, and what she has to offer goes down well too. Mrs Busby unwraps an artfully decorated box in which are three jars: two containing Mrs B's chutney (highly recommended) and one containing Sister Winifred and Sister Monica Joan's mincemeat (highly flammable). David is pleased to unwrap a bottle of scotch from Patsy.

When Delia wants her present from Patsy, Patsy shakes her head. 'You've already had yours,' she teases, grinning at Delia. Delia grins back.

'Oh, the coffee,' Mrs Busby says, remembering that morning.

Delia looks at her, confused for a moment. Then she remembers. 'Oh yes, the coffee. You've got me something else, though, haven't you Pats?'

Patsy has got Delia something else (she probably spoils Delia sometimes, Mrs Busby thinks): after the usual show of trying to guess what the presents are through the paper, she unwraps a silver photo frame and a book.

'It's something you had been talking about wanting to read for a while,' Patsy tells Delia as she tears the wrapping from the novel. 'I think you'll still like it.'

Mrs Busby picks it up to have a look: she's never heard of the author, someone called Claire Morgan, but Patsy seems to know what Delia's tastes are, so she supposes Delia will enjoy it.

For the moment, though, Delia's more interested in the photo frame. David's had his camera out over Christmas dinner, and now Delia says, 'I'm going to put a photo from this Christmas in it. Dad, set the timer on that thing. I want one of all of us.'

As she's standing beside Patsy and her daughter while David arranges the camera on its stand, she notices something: the thread of a gold chain around Delia's neck. She's about to reach over, to pull it out for a closer look when she thinks she recognizes it. She can't see what's attached to the chain, but she's fairly sure she can guess what's making that faint, circular outline on Delia's collar bone, underneath her jumper.

Now she's seen it, she can't pretend she hasn't. She tries to remember if she's seen Delia wearing it before today: she doesn't think she has. Is that what they were doing this morning, then, she wonders? Was that one of Patsy's presents for Delia?

'Smile', David says, rushing over from the camera with more speed than elegance.

She hesitates for a moment, and then she does. They all do.

* * *

They've just finished posing when there's a knock on the front door, and without waiting for a reply, her sister and her husband, her niece and her husband, and her great nephew and great niece all pile in, throwing 'Merry Christmases' around the room, dispensing hugs to everyone they bump into, and turning up the ambient noise in the room into something deafening.

The next two hours is lost in boisterous noise: after twenty minutes, for a bit of peace and quiet - and in an act of generous hospitality - Mrs Busby retreats into the kitchen to knock up some mince pies with the Nonnatus mincemeat. Patsy was right in her characterization of the mincemeat, she thinks as she opens the jar: there's enough brandy in it to fell a horse.

In amongst the noise from the sitting room, she catches fragments of conversation.

'So, Delia, cariad, when are you going to settle down and get married?' she hears her sister ask. She winces. It's a question she used to ask of Delia herself, pretending not to see the wounded look that Delia would get as she would try to convince her that a career was more important to her than any romantic involvement. It's a question Mrs Busby has long since found ways to deflect, on Delia's behalf, whenever someone like Gwynneth asked it.

'You don't want to be an old maid,' she can hear Jane, her niece, piling on the pressure.

'Now then,' someone else interjects – it sounds like Daffydd, Jane's husband. 'She's been ill, she's recuperating. There's plenty of time for getting wed when she's well again.'

'She gets up to all sorts in London, I'm sure,' Jane says now.

'Do you have a chap, then, Patsy?' Gwynneth's turned her attention from Delia. Or rather, Mrs Busby thinks, she's trying a new angle of attack.

'Never really seen the point,' Patsy says.

There's a rather chilly note in Patsy's voice, Mrs Busby thinks. She goes to intervene, sticking her head around the door and asking, 'Now, who wants tea?'

When she's back in the kitchen, she bangs about the cups and saucers. She's cross with them all.

'She's a bit posh, isn't she, your Delia's friend?'

Gwynneth's followed her into the kitchen. She chooses to ignore the weight Gwynneth places on the word 'friend': she knows exactly what she's aiming at, and no matter how accurate Gwynneth happens to be in her assessment of the situation, she won't give her the pleasure of knowing that.

'Oh, Patsy's alright,' she says.

Gwynneth's always been niggling at her about the choices Delia's made. Everything Delia's ever achieved – when she got her school certificate, when she went away to nursing college in London, when she qualified, when she got her first appointment and her first promotion – her sister has tried to belittle. Gwynneth has always hit back, talked over her with tales of her own children, none of whom have run off to London, all of whom have married and set up home within spitting distance of the village, all of whom have produced grandchildren.

The thing Delia has now is not ideal, in many ways, Mrs Busby reflects, but she wonders if it's actually the best thing given her daughter's determination to have a career. Delia couldn't keep up her job in the same way if she married; at least if she's with Patsy, she'll get to work _and_ have the love and comfort Mrs Busby has always wanted for her.

The only thing is, Mrs Busby thinks, it's a shame about the grandkids. Delia's got a nice way with children; Patsy too, going off her ability to calm Jane's two down and to get them to play nicely.

The dog comes into the kitchen, sniffs around her ankles. Mrs Busby grins. Well, they could still get a dog, at least. The grin falls. Patsy had confessed, the day before, to not being a dog person. Mrs Busby sighs. Maybe a cat instead, then.

* * *

After a couple of hours, having decided they've made enough noise in the Busby house, Jane and Daffydd decide to take the kids home; Gwynneth and John take their leave too. Delia and Patsy go with them part of the way to give the dog her evening walk, and silence descends on the house once more.

Well, more or less: David's stretched out on the settee, dozing gently in front of the fire, and snoring every now and then.

Mrs Busby picks up the book Patsy bought Delia to have a look at it while the house is quiet.

After twenty minutes or so, the girls are back.

'Tea?' Mrs Busby puts down the book and asks, when they've taken off their outdoor things and are back in the sitting room.

'Let me,' Patsy offers.

'No, Patsy love. You stay in here and get warm.'

Mrs Busby bustles in the kitchen. After a few minutes' work she's done: on one tray, she's put a pot of tea, cups, saucers, milk, sugar, and mince pies (made with the Nonnatus mincemeat); on another, she's put turkey sandwiches, the two jars of Mrs B's chutney, four plates, a couple of knives, and the salt and pepper.

She carries the first tray in.

David's still sprawled on the settee, asleep. Patsy's sitting in the armchair, with the newspaper on her lap, reading out the clues from the crossword. Delia's sitting on the floor at her feet, resting her head against Patsy's knee. The dog is stretched out next to her, her head in turn resting against Delia's knee.

Mrs Busby tuts. 'Delia, surely you're not comfortable on the floor.'

'I am, though. And besides, I can't disturb the dog.' Delia grins up at her mother.

'Well, at least get a cushion to sit on.' She leaves them to it, and goes to get the second tray. Patsy'll be gone by tomorrow lunchtime, back to her heavy caseload in London, so she lets them make the most of it while they can.

Delia will be going to London too, soon enough, she knows. She's getting better, stronger, every day, and her memories are coming back. She still has headaches now and again, but nothing like those she had at the start.

What was it she'd said to Patsy that day in the park? That she wouldn't change Delia. She wouldn't. She wouldn't change Delia for the world. But when Delia goes back to London, she wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of her than she has done in the last ten years.

When she waves Patsy off tomorrow, then, she won't say 'Come again next year.' But she knows, when the time is right, she'll make the invitation. They might not come next year: they might be working, they might not be able to get away. But she'll still ask. She'll make sure that Delia knows they are both welcome. When the time comes, she'll make the invitation, and this time she won't regret it.

THE END. (Really, this time)

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 **Happy New Year to you all!**


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